Matplotlib svg as string and not a file

Try using StringIO to avoid writing any file-like object to disk.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import StringIO
from matplotlib import numpy as np

x = np.arange(0,np.pi*3,.1)
y = np.sin(x)

fig = plt.figure()
plt.plot(x,y)

imgdata = StringIO.StringIO()
fig.savefig(imgdata, format='svg')
imgdata.seek(0)  # rewind the data

svg_dta = imgdata.buf  # this is svg data

file('test.htm', 'w').write(svg_dta)  # test it

Here is python3 version

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import io

f = io.BytesIO()
a = np.random.rand(10)
plt.bar(range(len(a)), a)
plt.savefig(f, format = "svg")

print(f.getvalue()) # svg string