How to prevent custom views from losing state across screen orientation changes

I've successfully implemented onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() for my main Activity to save and restore certain critical components across screen orientation changes.

But it seems, my custom views are being re-created from scratch when the orientation changes. This makes sense, although in my case it's inconvenient because the custom view in question is an X/Y plot and the plotted points are stored in the custom view.

Is there a crafty way to implement something similar to onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() for a custom view, or do I need to just implement methods in the custom view which allow me to get and set its "state"?

I think this is a much simpler version. Bundle is a built-in type which implements Parcelable

public class CustomView extends View
{
  private int stuff; // stuff

  @Override
  public Parcelable onSaveInstanceState()
  {
    Bundle bundle = new Bundle();
    bundle.putParcelable("superState", super.onSaveInstanceState());
    bundle.putInt("stuff", this.stuff); // ... save stuff 
    return bundle;
  }

  @Override
  public void onRestoreInstanceState(Parcelable state)
  {
    if (state instanceof Bundle) // implicit null check
    {
      Bundle bundle = (Bundle) state;
      this.stuff = bundle.getInt("stuff"); // ... load stuff
      state = bundle.getParcelable("superState");
    }
    super.onRestoreInstanceState(state);
  }
}

You do this by implementing View#onSaveInstanceState and View#onRestoreInstanceState and extending the View.BaseSavedState class.

public class CustomView extends View {

  private int stateToSave;

  ...

  @Override
  public Parcelable onSaveInstanceState() {
    //begin boilerplate code that allows parent classes to save state
    Parcelable superState = super.onSaveInstanceState();

    SavedState ss = new SavedState(superState);
    //end

    ss.stateToSave = this.stateToSave;

    return ss;
  }

  @Override
  public void onRestoreInstanceState(Parcelable state) {
    //begin boilerplate code so parent classes can restore state
    if(!(state instanceof SavedState)) {
      super.onRestoreInstanceState(state);
      return;
    }

    SavedState ss = (SavedState)state;
    super.onRestoreInstanceState(ss.getSuperState());
    //end

    this.stateToSave = ss.stateToSave;
  }

  static class SavedState extends BaseSavedState {
    int stateToSave;

    SavedState(Parcelable superState) {
      super(superState);
    }

    private SavedState(Parcel in) {
      super(in);
      this.stateToSave = in.readInt();
    }

    @Override
    public void writeToParcel(Parcel out, int flags) {
      super.writeToParcel(out, flags);
      out.writeInt(this.stateToSave);
    }

    //required field that makes Parcelables from a Parcel
    public static final Parcelable.Creator<SavedState> CREATOR =
        new Parcelable.Creator<SavedState>() {
          public SavedState createFromParcel(Parcel in) {
            return new SavedState(in);
          }
          public SavedState[] newArray(int size) {
            return new SavedState[size];
          }
    };
  }
}

The work is split between the View and the View's SavedState class. You should do all the work of reading and writing to and from the Parcel in the SavedState class. Then your View class can do the work of extracting the state members and doing the work necessary to get the class back to a valid state.

Notes: View#onSavedInstanceState and View#onRestoreInstanceState are called automatically for you if View#getId returns a value >= 0. This happens when you give it an id in xml or call setId manually. Otherwise you have to call View#onSaveInstanceState and write the Parcelable returned to the parcel you get in Activity#onSaveInstanceState to save the state and subsequently read it and pass it to View#onRestoreInstanceState from Activity#onRestoreInstanceState.

Another simple example of this is the CompoundButton

Here is another variant that uses a mix of the two above methods. Combining the speed and correctness of Parcelable with the simplicity of a Bundle:

@Override
public Parcelable onSaveInstanceState() {
    Bundle bundle = new Bundle();
    // The vars you want to save - in this instance a string and a boolean
    String someString = "something";
    boolean someBoolean = true;
    State state = new State(super.onSaveInstanceState(), someString, someBoolean);
    bundle.putParcelable(State.STATE, state);
    return bundle;
}

@Override
public void onRestoreInstanceState(Parcelable state) {
    if (state instanceof Bundle) {
        Bundle bundle = (Bundle) state;
        State customViewState = (State) bundle.getParcelable(State.STATE);
        // The vars you saved - do whatever you want with them
        String someString = customViewState.getText();
        boolean someBoolean = customViewState.isSomethingShowing());
        super.onRestoreInstanceState(customViewState.getSuperState());
        return;
    }
    // Stops a bug with the wrong state being passed to the super
    super.onRestoreInstanceState(BaseSavedState.EMPTY_STATE); 
}

protected static class State extends BaseSavedState {
    protected static final String STATE = "YourCustomView.STATE";

    private final String someText;
    private final boolean somethingShowing;

    public State(Parcelable superState, String someText, boolean somethingShowing) {
        super(superState);
        this.someText = someText;
        this.somethingShowing = somethingShowing;
    }

    public String getText(){
        return this.someText;
    }

    public boolean isSomethingShowing(){
        return this.somethingShowing;
    }
}

Easy with kotlin

@Parcelize
class MyState(val superSavedState: Parcelable?, val loading: Boolean) : View.BaseSavedState(superSavedState), Parcelable


class MyView : View {

    var loading: Boolean = false

    override fun onSaveInstanceState(): Parcelable? {
        val superState = super.onSaveInstanceState()
        return MyState(superState, loading)
    }

    override fun onRestoreInstanceState(state: Parcelable?) {
        val myState = state as? MyState
        super.onRestoreInstanceState(myState?.superSaveState ?: state)

        loading = myState?.loading ?: false
        //redraw
    }
}

The answers here already are great, but don't necessarily work for custom ViewGroups. To get all custom Views to retain their state, you must override onSaveInstanceState() and onRestoreInstanceState(Parcelable state) in each class. You also need to ensure they all have unique ids, whether they're inflated from xml or added programmatically.

What I came up with was remarkably like Kobor42's answer, but the error remained because I was adding the Views to a custom ViewGroup programmatically and not assigning unique ids.

The link shared by mato will work, but it means none of the individual Views manage their own state - the entire state is saved in the ViewGroup methods.

The problem is that when multiple of these ViewGroups are added to a layout, the ids of their elements from the xml are no longer unique (if its defined in xml). At runtime, you can call the static method View.generateViewId() to get a unique id for a View. This is only available from API 17.

Here is my code from the ViewGroup (it is abstract, and mOriginalValue is a type variable):

public abstract class DetailRow<E> extends LinearLayout {

    private static final String SUPER_INSTANCE_STATE = "saved_instance_state_parcelable";
    private static final String STATE_VIEW_IDS = "state_view_ids";
    private static final String STATE_ORIGINAL_VALUE = "state_original_value";

    private E mOriginalValue;
    private int[] mViewIds;

// ...

    @Override
    protected Parcelable onSaveInstanceState() {

        // Create a bundle to put super parcelable in
        Bundle bundle = new Bundle();
        bundle.putParcelable(SUPER_INSTANCE_STATE, super.onSaveInstanceState());
        // Use abstract method to put mOriginalValue in the bundle;
        putValueInTheBundle(mOriginalValue, bundle, STATE_ORIGINAL_VALUE);
        // Store mViewIds in the bundle - initialize if necessary.
        if (mViewIds == null) {
            // We need as many ids as child views
            mViewIds = new int[getChildCount()];
            for (int i = 0; i < mViewIds.length; i++) {
                // generate a unique id for each view
                mViewIds[i] = View.generateViewId();
                // assign the id to the view at the same index
                getChildAt(i).setId(mViewIds[i]);
            }
        }
        bundle.putIntArray(STATE_VIEW_IDS, mViewIds);
        // return the bundle
        return bundle;
    }

    @Override
    protected void onRestoreInstanceState(Parcelable state) {

        // We know state is a Bundle:
        Bundle bundle = (Bundle) state;
        // Get mViewIds out of the bundle
        mViewIds = bundle.getIntArray(STATE_VIEW_IDS);
        // For each id, assign to the view of same index
        if (mViewIds != null) {
            for (int i = 0; i < mViewIds.length; i++) {
                getChildAt(i).setId(mViewIds[i]);
            }
        }
        // Get mOriginalValue out of the bundle
        mOriginalValue = getValueBackOutOfTheBundle(bundle, STATE_ORIGINAL_VALUE);
        // get super parcelable back out of the bundle and pass it to
        // super.onRestoreInstanceState(Parcelable)
        state = bundle.getParcelable(SUPER_INSTANCE_STATE);
        super.onRestoreInstanceState(state);
    } 
}