arcpy bar chart rotation not working

[LauraTateosian]

Based on my understanding, setting the rotated property of a bar chart to True should draw the bars horizontally.   Adding c.rotated to the code below still generates verticle bars.  Is this functionality broken?

c = arcpy.Chart("chart1")
c.title = "Land cover in Gettysburg Battlefield"
c.rotated = True
c.type = "bar"
c.xAxis.field = "COVER"
c.bar.aggregation = "COUNT"

c.xAxis.title = "Land cover"
c.yAxis.title = "Number of polygons"

prj = arcpy.mp.ArcGISProject("CURRENT")
mxd = prj.listMaps()[0]
thelayer = mxd.listLayers()[0]
c.dataSource = thelayer
c

Here's the chart

From this documentation page, here's the description of the bar chart rotated property:

Indicates whether the chart is viewed vertically or horizontally. The chart displays vertically by default. True rotates the chart horizontally. False displays the chart vertically.

[DanPatterson]

from the code example way at the bottom

chart.updateChart()

I think if you don't create the chart using argument name (eg rotated=True) when creating it, it uses the default.

The other thought which I hope isn't true, is that it changes the page orientation.... but that would be just plain bad

[LauraTateosian · Accepted solution]

Okay, thanks. Your suggestions gave me some ideas that eventually led me to the solution.  My first 2 tries were failures:

1)  c = arcpy.Chart("chart1", rotated = True) gave me the following error: 

TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
In  [25]:
Line 1:     c = arcpy.Chart("chart1", rotated=True)
TypeError: __init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'rotated'

(BTW, I also tested using rotate = True in case it's a typo in the documentation)  But I guess the keyword arguments only work if you are calling it on the Bar chart object.  

2) I added a c.updateChart() before the last line and got this exception:

Exception                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
In  [28]:
Line 15:    c.updateChart()

File c:\program files\arcgis\pro\Resources\arcpy\arcpy\_chart.py, in updateChart:
Line 522:   return convertArcObjectToPythonObject(self._arc_object.updateChart(*gp_fixargs((), True)))

Exception: Invalid layer or table.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

3)  Here's what worked:  After setting type to bar, set the bar chart object to rotated  (c.bar.rotated = True)

c = arcpy.Chart("chart1")
c.title = "Land cover in Gettysburg Battlefield" 
c.type = "bar"
c.bar.rotated = True  # Rotated is a bar property, not a chart property.
c.xAxis.field = "COVER"
c.bar.aggregation = "COUNT"
c.xAxis.title = "Land cover"
c.yAxis.title = "Number of polygons"
prj = arcpy.mp.ArcGISProject("CURRENT")
mxd = prj.listMaps()[0]
thelayer = mxd.listLayers()[0]
c.dataSource = thelayer
c

Bottom line?   rotated is a bar property, not a chart property (since not all chart types can be rotated).   This was confusing since all the other properties I used are both chart and bar properties.  

By the way, I tried code similar to that example at the bottom of the page and got an error.  This code generated the error you see below it.

bar = arcpy.chart.Bar(x="COVER", 
                       aggregation="COUNT", 
                       title="Land cover in Gettysburg Battlefield",
                       xTitle = "Land cover",
                       yTitle = "Number of polygons",
                       rotated=True,
                       dataSource=theLayer)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AttributeError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
In  [42]:
Line 6:     bar = arcpy.chart.Bar(x="COVER", 

AttributeError: module 'arcpy' has no attribute 'chart'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

[ChristopherAllen · Accepted solution]

Hi @LauraTateosian ,

Thanks for the great question! You are correct, since the `rotated` property is specific to bar charts, you set this property similar to how you set the `aggregation` property (with `c.bar.rotated` rather than `c.rotated`).

I also wanted to address the error you are seeing in the final code example from your follow-up post. In your initial post, you used the original arcpy charting interface to create the chart (documentation page). However, in the final code example of your follow-up post, you used the newer `arcpy.charts` module that was introduced in version 2.8 of Pro (documentation page). The module is called `arcpy.charts` rather than `arcpy.chart`, so it appears that this might have caused the error you are seeing. For instance, here's a bar chart created with the `arcpy.charts` module:

lyr = arcpy.mp.ArcGISProject("current").listMaps()[0].listLayers()[0]
# Note: using `arcpy.charts.Bar`
c = arcpy.charts.Bar(x="status", aggregation="COUNT", rotated=True,
                     title="Street Tree Status", xTitle="Tree Status",
                     yTitle="Number of Trees", dataSource=lyr)
c

For more information on the newer `arcpy.charts` module and how it differs from the original arcpy charting interface, please see the following blog post:

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/analytics/making-charts-more-class-y-with-the-n...

Take care,

Chris

[LauraTateosian · Accepted solution]

Thank you for the reply, @ChristopherAllen.  I look forward to exploring "arcpy.charts", not to be confused with the old-fashioned "arcpy.Chart" class.