[Matplotlib-users] matplotlib figure serialization

[Rich K. <ric...@gm...>]

Hello,

I am a relatively new user of matplotlib; thank you to the matplotlib team
for this excellent package.

I have a question about serializing matplotlib figures.  I have searched for
serialization options for matplotlib figures but have not found much
information.  I am interested to hear about serialization use cases and the
approaches others use in these cases.

Here is the reason I am asking:

My use case for serialization is that I want to build a CouchDB database of
matplotlib figures.  The database could be accessed from a web application
(in my case I want to build a django app to create, edit and manage figures)
or desktop gui, or whatever.  For storage of the figures in CouchDB, I am
working on JSON representations of matplotlib figures.  The JSON could be
run through simple python functions to regenerate the matplotlib figures.  I
have very simple working examples, but to more completely test out this
approach I would attempt to recreate the plots in the matplotlib gallery
using JSON representations and a small set of (hopefully) very simple python
functions which would process the JSON markup.

Before I get too far, I wanted to see what others have done for similar use
cases, make sure I am not missing existing approaches, etc.  I am getting
ahead of myself now, but if there is broader interest in this approach, and
no other better solutions exist, I would set up a project on Google Code or
some other site to work on this.

Your feedback is very much appreciated.

Thanks!

Rich