Python Range Bar Plots

I have some data in a json file that contains a list of timings for different tests. Each test has a name, start timestamp and duration in milliseconds. It looks something like this:

Now, I love the Matplotlib Python library. I used it a lot when learning Machine Learning during the 2020 lockdowns. It is an incredibly rich and powerful tool  for creating professional data visualizations. So, as I'm new to it I thought I'd see if I could create a Range Bar plot of these data. 

In essence I want to show each test as a individual bar, the size of which corresponds to the duration and each bar's left most edge corresponding to the start time.

Here is the script:

It's very simple. Most of the script is concerned with reading the data from the file and generating the data structures. I thought it would be nice to highlight the longest duration test in red. This would be useful for seeing if the times for different tests were close.

 

And the output:

Very simple. There are of course many options to polish this. I'll update the blog as I refine them.