How to set the xticklabels for date in matplotlib?

To set the xticklabels for date in matplotlib, we can take the following steps −

Steps

Set the figure size and adjust the padding between and around the subplots.
Create two lists of epochs and values.
Get a list of dates from epochs.
Create a figure and a set of subplots.
Plot the date and values using plot() method.
Set the xticklabels, get date formatter and set the major formatter.
To remove the overlapping for ticklabels, rotate it by 10.
To display the figure, use show() method.

Example

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.dates as mdates
import time

plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = [7.50, 3.50]
plt.rcParams["figure.autolayout"] = True

epochs = [1259969793926, 1259969793927, 1259969793929, 1259969793928, 1259969793939]
values = [-0.5, -0.5, -0.75, -0.5, -1.25]

dates = [time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S', time.localtime(date)) for date in epochs]

fig, axes = plt.subplots(1, 1)
line1, = axes.plot(dates, values, lw=2, marker='*', color='r')

axes.set_xticklabels(dates)
fmt = mdates.DateFormatter('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')

axes.xaxis.set_major_formatter(fmt)
axes.tick_params(rotation=10)

plt.show()