Automatic detection of display availability with matplotlib

Question

I\'m generating matplotlib figures in a script which I run alternatively with or without a graphical display. I\'d like the script to adjust automatically: with display, it

Answer 1

when use GUI backend the figure object has show() method, you can use it to do the switch:

import matplotlib
#matplotlib.use("Agg")

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig = plt.figure()
havedisplay = False
if hasattr(fig, "show"):
    plt.show()
else:
    print "save fig"
    fig.savefig("myfig.png")