How to drawImage a matplotlib figure in a reportlab canvas?

Question

I would like to add a figure generated with matplotlib to a reportlab canvas using the method drawImage and without having to save the figure to the hard drive first.

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Answer 1

The problem is that drawImage expects either an ImageReader object or a filepath, not a file handle.

The following should work:

import Image
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import cStringIO
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
from reportlab.lib.units import inch, cm

from reportlab.lib.utils import ImageReader

fig = plt.figure(figsize=(4, 3))
plt.plot([1,2,3,4])
plt.ylabel('some numbers')

imgdata = cStringIO.StringIO()
fig.savefig(imgdata, format='png')
imgdata.seek(0)  # rewind the data

Image = ImageReader(imgdata)

c = canvas.Canvas('test.pdf')
c.drawImage(Image, cm, cm, inch, inch)
c.save()

Answer 2

Solution for Python 3, and embedding matplotlib figure as a vector image (no rasterization). Reposting here as I searched for this quite some time.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from io import BytesIO
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
from reportlab.graphics import renderPDF
from svglib.svglib import svg2rlg

fig = plt.figure(figsize=(4, 3))
plt.plot([1,2,3,4])
plt.ylabel('some numbers')

imgdata = BytesIO()
fig.savefig(imgdata, format='svg')
imgdata.seek(0)  # rewind the data

drawing=svg2rlg(imgdata)

c = canvas.Canvas('test2.pdf')
renderPDF.draw(drawing,c, 10, 40)
c.drawString(10, 300, "So nice it works")
c.showPage()
c.save()

svglib is available from conda-forge.