How do we edit xticks datetime format?

I am trying to increase the number of date tick marks on a graph,

but I cannot change the resulting datetime format:

Code that I think ought to work to obtain this result doesn't. I have tried the following (with a different initial datetime):

 xticks(linspace(datetime('1234-11-06'),datetime('2067-04-25'),6))
 xticks(linspace(datetime('06-Nov-1234','Format','yyyy-MM-dd'),datetime('25-Apr-2067','Format','yyyy-MM-dd'),5))
 xticks(linspace(datetime('1234','InputFormat','y','Format','y'),datetime('2067','InputFormat','y','Format','y'),8))
 xticks(linspace(datetime('1234','InputFormat','y','Format','yyyy-MM-dd'),datetime('2067','InputFormat','y','Format','yyyy-MM-dd'),8))

What is the problem? How do I increase the number of dates?

[Steven Lord]

Which release are you using?

How did you create the plot? Did you plot with numeric or datetime X data? It can make a difference.

Answer 1

[Jatin]

Hi @Daniel Bridges,

The “xticks” function you are trying to use is meant to set or query x-axis tick values, it doesn’t provide you ways to format the way tick values appear.

In your use case, If you are using a version of MATLAB R2023b or prior, you can use “datetick” which lets you specify the format you want to use in for dates. Here is an example code to use “datetick”:

% Define start and end dates 
startDate = datetime('1234-11-06', 'Format', 'yyyy-MM-dd'); 
endDate = datetime('2067-04-25', 'Format', 'yyyy-MM-dd'); 

% Generate tick positions 
numTicks = 6;  % Adjust this number to change the number of ticks 
tickPositions = linspace(startDate, endDate, numTicks); 

% Example plot 
figure; 
plot([startDate, endDate], [0, 1]);  
hold on; 

% Set the x-ticks 
xticks(tickPositions); 

% Optionally, format the x-tick labels 
ax = gca; % Get current axes 
ax.XTickLabelRotation = 45; % Rotate labels if they overlap 

% Display the plot 
datetick('x', 'yyyy-mm-dd', 'keepticks'); 

From version R2024a, the function “datetick” is not recommended, you can use the function “xtickformat” which lets you configure the tick label formats for different values including dates. Here is how you can use “xtickformat”:

% Display the plot 
xtickformat('yyyy-MM-dd'); 

You can also go through the documentation of “datetick” and “xtickformat” for more details:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/datetick.html

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/xtickformat.html

Hope this helps!