Create svg graph plots with matplotlib's pyplot

I needed to plot data in a line graph for the ALB vs NLB post so I quickly threw together a python function to do the job.

The function relies on the matplotlib library which you must install with pip install matplotlib first.

import csv
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

def plot_line_graph_from_csv(csv_file_path, svg_file_path, ylabel, set_1_column, set_2_column):
    attempts = []
    set1_values = []
    set2_values = []

    with open(csv_file_path, mode='r') as file:
        reader = csv.reader(file)
        # The first 2 rows in the csv were headers so I call next twice to skip both
        next(reader)
        next(reader)
        for row in reader:
            attempts.append(int(row[0]))
            set1_values.append(float(row[set_1_column]))
            set2_values.append(float(row[set_2_column]))

    plt.plot(attempts, set1_values, color='blue', label='ALB')
    plt.plot(attempts, set2_values, color='red', label='NLB')

    plt.xlabel('Attempts')
    plt.ylabel(ylabel)
    # plt.title('Line Graph of Two Sets of Values over 100 Attempts')
    plt.legend()
    plt.grid(True)

    # Save the graph as an SVG file
    plt.savefig(svg_file_path, format='svg')

    # plt.show() can be called to also launch and show the image immediately

A subsequent call to plot_line_graph_from_csv('5-5-100-alb-vs-nlb.csv', 'total.svg', 'Total (ms)', 4, 9); results in the following graph being created.

The plot function documentation can be found below for further perusal:

matplotlib.pyplot.plot