increasing width of figure in matplotlib according to number of x values

I was trying to draw a barchart using matplotlib.The number of items to be plotted can vary . I cannot set the figure.set_size_inches(w,h) or set_figwidth(w) with constants(like 6.,8. or 8.,12. etc),since I cannot tell in advance what the value of w or h should be.I want the width of figure to increase as the number of items to be plotted increases.Can someone tell me how I can do this?

import pylab

def create_barchart(map):
    xvaluenames = map.keys()
    xvaluenames.sort()
    yvalues = map.values()
    max_yvalue = get_max_yvalue(yvalues)
    xdata = range(len(xvaluenames))
    ydata = [map[x] for x in xvaluenames]
    splitxdata = [x.split('-',1) for x in xvaluenames]
    xlabels = [x[0] for x in splitxdata]
    figure = pylab.figure()
    ax = figure.add_subplot(1,1,1)
    figsize = figure.get_size_inches()
    print 'figure size1=',figsize,'width=',figsize[0],'height=',figsize[1]
    barwidth = .25
    ystep =  max_yvalue/5
    pylab.grid(True)
    if xdata and ydata:
        ax.bar(xdata, ydata, width=barwidth,align='center',color='orange')
        ax.set_xlabel('xvalues',color='green')
        ax.set_ylabel('yvalues',color='green')
        ax.set_xticks(xdata)
        ax.set_xlim([min(xdata) - 0.5, max(xdata) + 0.5])
        ax.set_xticklabels(xlabels)
        ax.set_yticks(range(0,max_yvalue+ystep,ystep))
        ax.set_ylim(0,max(ydata)+ystep)
    figure.autofmt_xdate(rotation=30)
    figure.savefig('mybarplot',format="png")
    print 'figure size2=',figure.get_size_inches()
    pylab.show()

def get_max_yvalue(yvals):
    return max(yvals) if yvals else 0

if I try with a small set of items,I get

if __name__=='__main__':
    datamap = dict(mark=39,jim=40, simon=20,dan=33)    
    print datamap
    create_barchart(datamap)

but if I use a l开发者_开发技巧arger set

datamap = dict(mark=39,jim=40, simon=20,dan=33) 
additional_values= dict(jon=34,ray=23,bert=45,kevin=35,ned=31,bran=11,tywin=56,tyrion=30,jaime=36,griffin=25,viserys=25)
datamap.update(additional_values)  
create_barchart(datamap)

This looks awful, I am wondering if there is a way to increase the width of figure,according to the number of items to be plotted,keeping the width of bars in both cases same

You can set the width when you initialize the figure:

# default scale is 1 in your original case, scales with other cases:
widthscale = len(yvalues)/4 
figsize = (8*widthscale,6) # fig size in inches (width,height)
figure = pylab.figure(figsize = figsize) # set the figsize

Replace the figure = pylab.figure() line with the above three lines and you get what your asking for.