python - Formatting datetime xlabels in matplotlib (pandas df.plot() method)

Question

I can't figure out how to change the format of these x-labels. Ideally, I'd like to call strftime('%Y-%m-%d') on them. I've tried things like set_major_formatter but was unsuccessful.

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
date_range = pd.date_range('2014-01-01', '2015-01-01', freq='MS')
df = pd.DataFrame({'foo': np.random.randint(0, 10, len(date_range))}, index=date_range)
ax = df.plot(kind='bar')

Answer 1

Simply access the tick labels and change them:

xtl=[item.get_text()[:10] for item in ax.get_xticklabels()]
_=ax.set_xticklabels(xtl)