How do I make matplotlib work in AWS EMR Jupyter notebook?

Question

This is very close to this question, but I have added a few details specific to my question:

Matplotlib Plotting using AWS-EMR jupyter notebook

I would like to find a way to use matplotlib inside my Jupyter notebook. Here is the code-snippet in error, it's fairly simple:

notebook

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("agg")
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot([1,2,3,4])
plt.show()

I chose this snippet because this line alone fails as it tries to use TKinter (which is not installed on an AWS EMR cluster):

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

When I run the full notebook snippet, the result is no runtime error but also nothing happens (no graph is shown.) My understanding on one way this can work is by adding either of the following snips:

pyspark magic notation

%matplotlib inline

results

unknown magic command 'matplotlib'
UnknownMagic: unknown magic command 'matplotlib'

IPython explicit magic call

from IPython import get_ipython
get_ipython().run_line_magic('matplotlib', 'inline')

results

'NoneType' object has no attribute 'run_line_magic'
Traceback (most recent call last):
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'run_line_magic'

to my notebook which invokes a spark magic command which inlines matplotlib plots (at least that's my interpretation.) I have tried both of these after using a bootstrap action:

EMR bootstrap

sudo pip install matplotlib
sudo pip install ipython

Even with these added, I still get an error that there is no magic for matplotlib. So my question is definitely:

Question

How do I make matplotlib work in an AWS EMR Jupyter notebook?

(Or how do I view graphs and plot images in AWS EMR Jupyter notebook?)

Answer 1

As you mentioned, matplotlib is not installed on the EMR cluster, therefore such error will occur:

However, it is actually available in the managed Jupyter notebook instance (the docker container). Using the %%local magic will allow you to run the cell locally:

Answer 2

The answer by @00schneider actually works.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# plot data here
plt.show()

after

plt.show()

re-run the magic cell that contains the below, and you will see a plot on your AWS EMR Jupyter PySpark notebook

%matplot plt

Answer 3

Import matplotlib as

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

and use the magic command %matplot plt instead as shown in the tutorial here: https://aws.amazon.com/de/blogs/big-data/install-python-libraries-on-a-running-cluster-with-emr-notebooks/

Answer 4

The following should work:

import matplotlib
%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot([1,2,3,4])

Run the entire script in one cell

Answer 5

To plot something in AWS EMR notebooks, you simply need to use %matplot plt. You can see this documented about midway down this page from AWS.

For example, if I wanted to make a quick plot:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.clf() #clears previous plot in EMR memory
plt.plot([1,2,3,4])
plt.show()

%matplot plt

Answer 6

Try below code. FYI we have matplotlib 3.1.1 installed in Python3.6 on emr-5.26.0 and i used PySpark Kernel. Make sure that "%matplotlib inline" is first line in cell

%matplotlib inline

import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot([1,2,3,4])
plt.show()