Undo and Redo Annotations on Android

PSPDFKit for Android supports undo and redo for creating and editing annotations. Users can undo and redo changes using the buttons in AnnotationCreationToolbar and AnnotationEditingToolbar.

Undo and Redo

To achieve this, we’ve created an interface named UndoManager. The implementation of this interface is provided through the PdfFragment#getUndoManager() method. The UndoManager provides methods for controlling the undo/redo business logic, including:

  • undo() — undo the last performed edit

  • redo() — redo the last undone edit

  • canUndo() — whether or not the undo action can be executed

  • canRedo() — whether or not the redo action can be executed

Enabling/Disabling Undo and Redo

Undo and redo operations are enabled by default. However, you can use undoEnabled(boolean) and redoEnabled(boolean) when building a PdfConfiguration to control whether or not undo and redo are enabled or disabled in your app. Logically, redo cannot be enabled if undo is disabled.

Listening for Undo and Redo Changes

To listen for undo and redo changes, you can attach OnUndoHistoryChangeListener to the UndoManager through addOnUndoHistoryChangeListener(). The callback will notify you once the undo history changes so that you can update the UI or components that need to be aware of the undo/redo state.

Current Limitations

  • The entire implementation is still kept internally within the framework, meaning developers can’t access the data regarding each specific edit, nor can they create their own. More and more things will be exposed in upcoming versions.

  • The undo history state restoration works by restoring the instance of the fragment rather than serializing it. This means that if you destroy the fragment when the configuration changes, you will lose the history.

  • Currently, undo/redo history is only tracked for annotations.