MATLAB: Creation of timeline with multiple occurrences of various events

timeline

I am working to create a timeline containing numerous events that occur multiple times over the course of about 10 years (hurricanes, beach nourishment projects, flooding, etc.). I have tried various forms of horizontal stacked bar graphs and have come to find the attached script created by Iari-Gabriel Marino. The setup seems to be the closest that I can find to what I need to graph. The issue I am having is figuring out how to code an event occurring multiple times- as his script depicts a one-time lifeline of historical figures- and how to do so on monthly intervals, rather than yearly.
Does anyone know the best way to accomplish this? I have tried creating multiple scripts, adjusting Iari-Gabriel Marinos' as well as creating my own, and can not seem to figure out how to do so.
Thank you.

Best Answer

This is a variation on that timeline code that copes with duplicate events:
function timeline2(list)
  %make sure the list is ordered in reverse chronological order (to help identify the last label of a row)
  [~, order] = sortrows(vertcat(list{:, 2}), [-1 2]);
  list = list(order, :);
  %identify unique label and generate vertical positioning
  [labels, idx, ylabels] = unique(list(:, 1), 'stable');
  ypatches = max(ylabels) + 1 - [ylabels, ylabels, ylabels-1, ylabels-1]'; 
  ylabels = max(ylabels) + 1 - ylabels(idx);
  %generate horizonal positioning
  xpatches = [vertcat(list{:, 2}), fliplr(vertcat(list{:, 2}))]';
  xlabels = xpatches(2, idx);
  %plot
  figure;
  colour = parula(size(list, 1));
  patch(xpatches, ypatches, reshape(colour, 1, [], 3));
  text(xlabels+5, ylabels+0.5, labels, 'fontsize', 10);
  xlabel('Time (years)');
  grid on
end
An example:
timeline2({'A', [-10 20]
           'B', [0 50]
           'C', [-100 100]
           'A', [90 100]
           'D', [30 50]
           'D', [-20 20]}
The only difference from the original code is in the generation of the y position of the patches, whereas the original code just use 1:numberoflines I use the 3rd return value of unique, and in the labeling where I need to be a bit more clever to only have one label per row. Again unique comes to the rescue.
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