Module java.desktop
Package javax.swing.undo

Class UndoManager

java.lang.Object
javax.swing.undo.AbstractUndoableEdit
javax.swing.undo.CompoundEdit
javax.swing.undo.UndoManager
All Implemented Interfaces:
Serializable, EventListener, UndoableEditListener, UndoableEdit
public class UndoManager extends CompoundEdit implements UndoableEditListener
UndoManager manages a list of UndoableEdits, providing a way to undo or redo the appropriate edits. There are two ways to add edits to an UndoManager. Add the edit directly using the addEdit method, or add the UndoManager to a bean that supports UndoableEditListener. The following examples creates an UndoManager and adds it as an UndoableEditListener to a JTextField: 
   UndoManager undoManager = new UndoManager();
   JTextField tf = ...;
   tf.getDocument().addUndoableEditListener(undoManager);

UndoManager maintains an ordered list of edits and the index of the next edit in that list. The index of the next edit is either the size of the current list of edits, or if undo has been invoked it corresponds to the index of the last significant edit that was undone. When undo is invoked all edits from the index of the next edit to the last significant edit are undone, in reverse order. For example, consider an UndoManager consisting of the following edits: A b c D. Edits with a upper-case letter in bold are significant, those in lower-case and italicized are insignificant.

Figure 1
Figure 1

As shown in figure 1, if D was just added, the index of the next edit will be 4. Invoking undo results in invoking undo on D and setting the index of the next edit to 3 (edit c), as shown in the following figure.

Figure 2
Figure 2

The last significant edit is A, so that invoking undo again invokes undo on c, b, and A, in that order, setting the index of the next edit to 0, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 3
Figure 3

Invoking redo results in invoking redo on all edits between the index of the next edit and the next significant edit (or the end of the list). Continuing with the previous example if redo were invoked, redo would in turn be invoked on A, b and c. In addition the index of the next edit is set to 3 (as shown in figure 2).

Adding an edit to an UndoManager results in removing all edits from the index of the next edit to the end of the list. Continuing with the previous example, if a new edit, e, is added the edit D is removed from the list (after having die invoked on it). If c is not incorporated by the next edit (c.addEdit(e) returns true), or replaced by it (e.replaceEdit(c) returns true), the new edit is added after c, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 4
Figure 4

Once end has been invoked on an UndoManager the superclass behavior is used for all UndoableEdit methods. Refer to CompoundEdit for more details on its behavior.

Unlike the rest of Swing, this class is thread safe.

Warning: Serialized objects of this class will not be compatible with future Swing releases. The current serialization support is appropriate for short term storage or RMI between applications running the same version of Swing. As of 1.4, support for long term storage of all JavaBeans has been added to the java.beans package. Please see XMLEncoder.