Restoring state of TextView after screen rotation?

Question

In my app I have TextView and EditText. Both have data in it. When the screen orientation changes the data in the EditText remains, but TextView data is cleared.

Can some one help me out to find a way to retain data in TextView too?

Insubstantial

Answer 1

If you want to force your TextView to save its state you must add freezesText attribute:

<TextView 
     ... 
     android:freezesText="true" />

From documentation on freezesText :

If set, the text view will include its current complete text inside of its frozen icicle in addition to meta-data such as the current cursor position. By default this is disabled; it can be useful when the contents of a text view is not stored in a persistent place such as a content provider

Morceau

@kAnNaN: I think you should accept this answer as a solution. – Multipartite

Why isn't the text 'frozen/saved' by default like other attributes (text selection, cursor position, etc.)? In other words, in what scenario would someone actually prefer that the text is not saved? – Stearin

Is there a way to set this globally across the application? In the manifest maybe? Or at least in the view? – Suspensoid

@Stearin my guess would be that often TextViews are built from static strings stored in XML, in which case it's redundant for the system to remember the values. – Gotthard

Actually, once you give the EditText or TextView an id the value will persist during a screen rotation event. – Habitue

@jegesh - unfortunately this is not the case for TextViews at least on some devices (Jellybean) – Ceruse

Doesn't work for me, at least not on an API 17 device – Galling

@Guatam, the real reason why you don't want this to happen automatically is that a TextView can store very very complicated text (spans). Spans can hold references to activities have click listeners and other complicated things. You can't simply save those things. Also custom spans can't be restored by the system. – Juno

Answer 2

In order to retain data on orientation change you need to implement the two methods:

@Override
protected void onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onRestoreInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
    // Read values from the "savedInstanceState"-object and put them in your textview
}

@Override
protected void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
    // Save the values you need from your textview into "outState"-object
    super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
}

Circular

Why use onRestoreInstanceState when the same bundle is available in onCreate ? – Ultramicrochemistry

@Ultramicrochemistry Check this documentation. developer.android.com/training/basics/activity-lifecycle/… This is conjecture but I suspect it is because the system keeps track of if it is creating a new activity, or recreating an old one. onRestorySavedInstance is only called in rarer circumstances - configuration changes and activity destruction due to memory limitations. – Augmenter

Answer 3

Android does not handle that kind of stuff for you. You have save all data manually.

You can use in a activity to save values

@Override
    public Object onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() {
        HashMap<String, Object> savedValues = new HashMap<String, Object>();
        savedValues.put("someKey", someData);           
        return savedValues;
    }

and use something like this in the oncreate method of a activity to load the saved objects

HashMap < String, Object> savedValues 
     = (HashMap<String, Object>)this.getLastNonConfigurationInstance();

you can also choose the disable orientation change for an activity

<activity android:name=".Activity" android:screenOrientation="portrait" >
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

Codel

cannot override onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() in android.support.v4.app.fragmentActivity;overridden method is final!! – Swart

Answer 4

1) Not all views with an ID save their state. Android widgets, with an ID, whose state can be changed by the user, appear to save their state on a soft kill. So EditText saves its state, but TextView does not save its state on a soft kill.

"AFAIK, Android only bothers saving state for things that are expected to change. That is why it saves the text in an EditText (which a user is likely to change) and perhaps does not save the state for a TextView (which normally stays static)"

Mark M

So you may choose to save the state of the textview in onSaveInstanceState and you may choose to restore the state of the textview in onCreate.

2) Best practice is to save "internal" non view instance state even if you declare

android:configChanges= "orientation|keyboardHidden" 

From the docs:

"However, your application should always be able to shutdown and restart with its previous state intact. Not only because there are other configuration changes that you cannot prevent from restarting your application but also in order to handle events such as when the user receives an incoming phone call and then returns to your application."

JAL

Hardi

Answer 5

Modify your activities in AndroidManifest.xml to override orientation change behavior by adding this to your activity/activities:

android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden"

It should look somewhat like this:

    <activity android:name=".activity.LoginActivity"
              android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden"
              android:label="@string/app_name">
    </activity>

Mouseear

In general, this approach isn't recommended by the documentation: "Using this attribute should be avoided and used only as a last-resort. Please read Handling Runtime Changes..." – Geneticist

Answer 6

Add these to AndroidManifest.xml
Put your Activity Name in the place of Activity_Name

<activity android:name="Activity_Name"
        android:screenOrientation="sensor"
        ...
        android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden|screenSize">

This will work with value changing TextField also.

Cystolith

Answer 7

just add

android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize"

to your Activity in AndroidManifest.xml.

Halfhardy

Answer 8

When configuration changes Android restarts your activity by default. To change this you should override onConfigurationChanged() method. Also, you should add android:configChanges to your manifest file.

You can read more here.

Negativism

Answer 9

I also used

android:configChanges="orientation"

and it did not work.

But then I found a solution.

Verify if you have the following line correctly in your maniest:

<uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="11" android:targetSdkVersion="11" />

make sure it does not read something like

<uses-sdk android`:minSdkVersion="11" android:targetSdkVersion="15" />`

I had it the second way in first place but when I corrected it state got preserved.

Hydroxide

This is a completely different thing. Target SDK is to make your app compatible with most ranges of Android OS. This is not an answer, by some means this may have worked in your case but this is not an appropiate solution. – Footy