# Bar chart with rotated x label for each bar
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bar-chart-with-rotated-x-label-for-each-bar/28554
**Category:** Visualization
**Created:** [September 9, 2019, 11:58am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bar-chart-with-rotated-x-label-for-each-bar/28554 "2019-09-09T11:58:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mthelm85](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mthelm85)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 11:58am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bar-chart-with-rotated-x-label-for-each-bar/28554/1 "2019-09-09T11:58:10Z")
I’m having a hard time plotting a simple bar chart with Plots.jl that has a label below each bar. The data are stored in a DataFrame that looks like this:
```julia
julia> merged[:, [1,5,6]]
85×3 DataFrame
│ Row │ naics │ % of total estabs │ industry │
│ │ Int64 │ Float64 │ String │
├─────┼───────┼───────────────────┼────────────────────┤
│ 1 │ 113 │ 0.00112943 │ Forestry and Lo... │
│ 2 │ 114 │ 0.000362778 │ Fishing, Huntin... │
│ 3 │ 115 │ 0.00142785 │ Support Activit... │
│ 4 │ 211 │ 0.000947334 │ Oil and Gas Ext... │
⋮
│ 81 │ 721 │ 0.00863121 │ Accommodation │
│ 82 │ 722 │ 0.0822932 │ Food Services a... │
│ 83 │ 811 │ 0.0277618 │ Repair and Main... │
│ 84 │ 812 │ 0.0297605 │ Personal and La... │
│ 85 │ 813 │ 0.0399547 │ Religious, Gran... │
```
I can achieve a plot that has vertical labels, but the labels don’t show up for every bar and there are other issues with the plot:
The other issues are that there is a space to the left and right of the first/last bars that I would like to eliminate and the labels aren’t centered under the bars.
The code to produce the above is:
```julia
bar(string.(merged[:, 1]), merged[:, 4], xrotation=90, legend=:topleft)
```
Any ideas?
Thanks!!
---
### Author:  [@kevbonham](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kevbonham)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 12:29pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bar-chart-with-rotated-x-label-for-each-bar/28554/2 "2019-09-09T12:29:14Z")
Try setting xticks manually. I think something like `xticks=minimum(df.naics):maximum(df.naics)` (assuming that’s the column that provides the x values. Compare:
```julia
julia> df = DataFrame(idx=1:20, val = rand(20), label = [randstring(4) for _ in 1:20]);
julia> bar(df.idx, df.val)
julia> bar(df.idx, df.val, legend=false)
```
to
```julia
bar(df.idx, df.val, legend=false, xticks=1:20)
```
You can also set the labels to be strings:
```julia
bar(df.idx, df.val, legend=false, xticks=(1:20, df.label), xrotation=90)
```
As for centering text, I’m guessing it’s something with `xfontvalign` or `xfonthalign`, but I can’t figure it out. And for removing the spaces, take a look at the various `framestyle`s, and I think there are arguments involving margins, but I don’t know for sure. See the bottom of [this page](http://docs.juliaplots.org/latest/examples/gr/#portfolio-composition-maps) for all the attributes you can play with.
Would be nice if the possible arguments for all of those attributes lived somewhere in the docs too.
---
### Author:  [@mthelm85](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mthelm85)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 12:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bar-chart-with-rotated-x-label-for-each-bar/28554/3 "2019-09-09T12:37:08Z")
This worked (except for the label alignment), thanks!
```julia
bar(
string.(merged[:, 1]),
merged[:, 4],
xrotation=90,
legend=:topleft,
fillalpha=0.25,
label="% of total estabs",
xticks=(1:size(merged)[1], merged.naics)
)
```
I’m not sure that all the arguments listed as supported actually work. I’ve tried using the `bottom_margin` argument, for example, to no avail.
---
### Author:  [@mthelm85](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mthelm85)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 1:27pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bar-chart-with-rotated-x-label-for-each-bar/28554/4 "2019-09-09T13:27:11Z")
FYI, I was able to align the ticks to the center of the bars by doing this:
```julia
bar(
string.(merged[:, 1]),
merged[:, 4],
xrotation=45, # changing the rotation to 45 degrees makes the labels look centered
legend=:topleft,
fillalpha=0.25,
label="% of total estabs",
xticks=(0.5:size(merged)[1], merged.naics) # notice I changed 1 to 0.5
)
```
For the labels, the 45-degree rotation isn’t an ideal solution, but it’ll do for now. 😃
---
### Author:  [@kevbonham](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kevbonham)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 3:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bar-chart-with-rotated-x-label-for-each-bar/28554/5 "2019-09-09T15:09:35Z")
> [@mthelm85](#):
>
> I’m not sure that all the arguments listed as supported actually work. I’ve tried using the `bottom_margin` argument, for example, to no avail.
If so, might be worth opening an issue.
---
### Author:  [@davidanthoff](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/davidanthoff)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 5:32pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bar-chart-with-rotated-x-label-for-each-bar/28554/6 "2019-09-09T17:32:38Z")
Here is the [VegaLite.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/VegaLite.jl) version:
```julia
df |> @vlplot(:bar, x="idx:n", y=:val)
```
And that produces:
The trick is to configure the x axis as a nominal, not quant, scale by adding `:n` to the column name. For a nominal scale, it will print all values.