Possible to make labels appear when hovering over a point in matplotlib?

Question

I am using matplotlib to make scatter plots. Each point on the scatter plot is associated with a named object. I would like to be able to see the name of an object when I ho

Answer 1

This solution works when hovering a line without the need to click it:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Need to create as global variable so our callback(on_plot_hover) can access
fig = plt.figure()
plot = fig.add_subplot(111)

# create some curves
for i in range(4):
    # Giving unique ids to each data member
    plot.plot(
        [i*1,i*2,i*3,i*4],
        gid=i)

def on_plot_hover(event):
    # Iterating over each data member plotted
    for curve in plot.get_lines():
        # Searching which data member corresponds to current mouse position
        if curve.contains(event)[0]:
            print "over %s" % curve.get_gid()

fig.canvas.mpl_connect('motion_notify_event', on_plot_hover)           
plt.show()