Core concepts¶

The return contract¶

Every plot_* function returns (fig, ax). ax is the drawable surface for the active backend (a matplotlib Axes, or — for bokeh — the figure itself, since bokeh has no separate axes object).

Canonical calls → native backends¶

You call one high-level function. A Renderer per backend translates it into native matplotlib / seaborn / bokeh calls. An Overrider routes your keyword arguments to the right native property. This is what lets the same call render three ways.

Switching backends¶

The same plotting code works on all three. Only the display step differs for bokeh, which renders to HTML and needs an explicit show()

import numpy as np
import behaviz as bv
from bokeh.io import show, output_notebook

x = np.linspace(0, 2 * np.pi, 100)
y = np.sin(x)

matplotlibbokeh

bv.set_renderer("matplotlib")

fig, ax = bv.plot_line(x, y)

matplotlib output

bv.set_renderer("bokeh")

fig, ax = bv.plot_line(x,y)
show(fig) # or ax, bokeh only has a Figure object