Turn .plot() method in accessor so other pandas plotting methods are also available

Currently GeoDataFrame.plot() function overrides the pandas plot method, which means you cannot quickly plot your non-geometry columns.

The idea would be to follow the pattern from pandas where the plot() method is also an accessor like .plot.scatter() so those become available, while the default .plot() would still override with the geometrical functionality.

[benabernathy]

Sorry for the stream of consciousness here. I’m kind of working things out as I type. I looked a little closer at how Pandas accomplishes this. It has a class called FramePlotMethod that can be called either as a method or used as an accessor where the other plotting methods can be called (e.g. df.plot.line(). The class is added as a property to DataFrame through the use of another Pandas class called CachedAccessor.

It appears GeoPandas does things a little bit differently. GeoPandas has a set of plotting methods defined in plotting.py as well as a plot() method on the GeoDataFrame class.

It seems to me the best long term approach is to make a plotting class in GeoPandas similar to FramePlotMethod (e.g. GeoPlotMethod). Then add it as a property by wrapping it in some sort of accessor. Maybe we can take advantage of Pandas’s CachedAccessor here?

However, I am not sure of the impact of moving those plotting methods in plotting.py into a class. That seems like it would be a breaking change in the API. We should be sensitive to that.

An alternative is we create the class, but not migrate those functions into the new class. The class could proxy those functions, then over time migrate them to the class during a major version change.

TL;DR Version

1. Create a new class called GeoPlotMethods.
2. GeoPlotMethods should proxy calls to original methods in plotting.py.
3. Add GeoPlotMethods to GeoDataFrame as a property using an accessor class such as CachedAccessor.
4. Make GeoPlotMethods callable and migrate the GeoDataFrame.plot() method from the GeoDataFrame class to GeoPlotMethods.
5. Find a way to proxy the call to a Pandas DataFrame.plot. This could possibly be done by having our new GeoPlotMethods class extend FramePlotMethod. This would allow for calls like gdf.plot.line(), gdf.plot() as well as future plotting techniques.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

[martinfleis]

Closed by #1465