Implementing Undo and Redo for a TextBox

A TextBox has a rather crude Undo/Redo feature. By right-clicking on a TextBox, a popup menu containing an Undo entry is presented. This Undo will undo only one action, which may include several edits. An immediate subsequent Undo will undo the Undo - in essence, a Redo. The same behavior can be achieved using Ctrl+Z. A more powerful Undo/Redo feature would allow an arbitrary sequence of edits to be undone, with the option of redoing any of these Undo operations. This section outlines various ways of implementing such a feature.

We first observe that when we perform an Undo, we want to undo the most recent edit that has not been undone; i.e., we need LIFO access to the edits. Likewise, when we perform a Redo, we want to redo the most recent Undo that has not been redone. Again, we need LIFO access to the Undo operations. We will therefore use two stacks, one to keep the edit history, and one to keep the Undo history (i.e., the history of Undo operations that can be redone).

Before we can define these stacks, we need to determine what we will be storing in them; i.e., we need to determine how we will represent an edit. We will consider several ways of doing this, but the simplest way is to store the entire contents of the TextBox after each edit. Proceeding in this way, we really aren’t representing edits at all, but we certainly would have the information we need to undo the edits. Likewise, the Undo history would store the entire contents of the TextBox prior to each Undo. Because the contents of the TextBox form a string, we need two private fields, each referring to a stack of strings:

/// <summary>
/// The history of the contents of the TextBox.
/// </summary>
private Stack<string> _editingHistory = new();

/// <summary>
/// The history of TextBox contents that have been undone and can be redone.
/// </summary>
private Stack<string> _undoHistory = new();

Before we can proceed to implementing the Undo and Redo operations, we need to do a bit more initialization. Note that by the way we have defined _editingHistory, this stack needs to contain the initial contents of the TextBox. Therefore, assuming the TextBox field is named uxEditBuffer, we need to add the following line to the end of the constructor of our user interface:

_editingHistory.Push(uxEditBuffer.Text);

In order to support Undo and Redo, we need to be able to record the content of uxEditBuffer each time it is modified. We can do this via an event handler for the TextChanged event on the TextBox. Because this event is the default event for a TextBox, we can add such an event handler by double-clicking on the TextBox within the Visual Studio® Design window. This event handler will then be called every time the contents of the TextBox are changed.

We need to deal with one important issue before we can write the code for this event handler. Whenever we perform an Undo or Redo operation, we will change the contents of the TextBox. This will cause the TextChanged event handler to be called. However, we don’t want to treat an Undo or a Redo in the same way as an edit by the user. For example, if the user does an Undo, we don’t want that Undo to be considered an edit, or a subsequent Undo would just undo the Undo; i.e., it would perform a Redo rather than an Undo.

Fortunately, there is an easy way to distinguish between an edit made by the user and a change made by the program code. A TextBox has a Modified property, which is set to true when the user modifies the TextBox contents, and is set to false when the program modifies the contents. Thus, we only want to record the TextBox contents when this property is true. Assuming the TextBox is named uxEditBuffer, we can then set up the event handler as follows:

/// <summary>
/// Handles a TextChanged event on the edit buffer.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="sender">The object signaling the event.</param>
/// <param name="e">Information about the event.</param>
private void EditBufferTextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (uxEditBuffer.Modified)
    {
        RecordEdit();
    }
}

Now let’s consider how to write the RecordEdit method. Suppose there are two GUI controls (e.g., menu items or buttons) called uxUndo and uxRedo, which invoke the Undo and Redo operations, respectively. These controls should be enabled only when there are operations to undo or redo. Thus, initially these controls will be disabled. Whenever the user modifies the contents of the TextBox, we need to do the following:

• Push the resulting text onto _editingHistory.
• Enable uxUndo, as there is now an edit that can be undone.
• Clear the contents of _undoHistory, as the last change to the TextBox contents was not an Undo. (A Stack<T> has a Clear method for this purpose.)
• Disable uxRedo.

We therefore have the following method:

/// <summary>
/// Records an edit made by the user.
/// </summary>
private void RecordEdit()
{
    _editingHistory.Push(uxEditBuffer.Text);
    uxUndo.Enabled = true;
    _undoHistory.Clear();
    uxRedo.Enabled = false;
}

Now that we have a mechanism for recording the user’s edits, we can implement the Undo operation. The contents of the TextBox following the last edit (i.e, the current contents of the TextBox) should always be at the top of _editingHistory. An Undo should change the current contents to the previous contents - i.e., to the next string on _editingHistory. However, we don’t want to lose the top string, as this is the string that would need to be restored by a subsequent Redo. Instead, we need to push this string onto _undoHistory. We then need to enable uxRedo. In order to determine whether uxUndo should be enabled, we need to know how many elements remain in _editingHistory. We know there is at least one string on this stack - the string that we placed in the TextBox. There is an edit to undo if there is at least one more element on this stack - i.e., if its Count is greater than 1. We therefore have the following event handler for a Click event on uxUndo:

/// <summary>
/// Handles a Click event on Undo.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="sender">The object signaling the event.</param>
/// <param name="e">Information about the event.</param>
private void UndoClick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    _undoHistory.Push(_editingHistory.Pop());
    uxRedo.Enabled = true;
    uxEditBuffer.Text = _editingHistory.Peek();
    uxUndo.Enabled = _editingHistory.Count > 1;
}

The implementation of Redo is similar, but now we need to transfer a string between the stacks in the opposite direction - we move the top string from _undoHistory to _editingHistory. Then uxRedo should be enabled if any more strings remain in _undoHistory. The string we removed from _undoHistory should be placed in the TextBox. Finally, uxUndo should be enabled. We therefore have the following event handler for a Click event on uxRedo:

/// <summary>
/// Handles a Click event on Redo.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="sender">The object signaling the event.</param>
/// <param name="e">Information about the event.</param>
private void RedoClick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    _editingHistory.Push(_undoHistory.Pop());
    uxRedo.Enabled = _undoHistory.Count > 0;
    uxEditBuffer.Text = _editingHistory.Peek();
    uxUndo.Enabled = true;
}

This solution will work, except that an Undo or Redo always brings the text caret to the beginning of the TextBox contents. Furthermore, if the TextBox contains a long string, each edit causes a long string to be placed onto _editingHistory. This can quickly eat up a lot of memory, and may eventually fill up all available storage. In what follows, we will outline two better approaches.

The idea for both of these approaches is that instead of recording the entire contents of the TextBox for each edit, we only record a description of each edit. A single edit will either be an insertion or a deletion of some text. The number of characters inserted/deleted may vary, as the edit may be a cut or a paste (if we select a block of text and do a paste, the TextChanged event handler is actually called twice - once for the deletion of the selected text, and once for the insertion of the pasted text). We can therefore describe the edit with the following three values:

• A bool indicating whether the edit was an insertion or a deletion.
• An int giving the index of the beginning of the edit.
• The string inserted or deleted.

We can maintain this information in stacks in one of two ways. One way is to use non-generic stacks and to push three items onto a stack for each edit. If we do this, we need to realize that when we pop elements from the stack, they will come out in reverse order from the way they were pushed onto it. Alternatively, we can define a class or a structure to represent an edit using the three values above as private fields. We can then use generic stacks storing instances of this type.

Whichever way we choose to represent the edits, we need to be able to compute each of the three pieces of information describing the edit. In order to compute this information, we need to compare the current contents of the TextBox with its prior contents in order to see how it changed. This means that, in addition to the two private fields we defined for the stacks, we will also need a private field to store the last string we saw in the TextBox. Rather than initializing _editingHistory within the constructor, we should now initialize this string in its place (because there will have been no edits initially, both stacks should initially be empty). If we keep this string field up to date, we will always have a “before” picture (the contents of this field) and an “after” picture (the current contents of the TextBox) for the edit we need to record.

To determine whether the edit was an insertion or a deletion, we can compare the lengths of the current TextBox contents and its previous contents. If the current content is longer, then the edit was an insertion; otherwise, the edit was a deletion. We therefore have the following method for this purpose:

/// <summary>
/// Returns whether text was deleted from the given string in order to
/// obtain the contents of the given TextBox.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="editor">The TextBox containing the result of the edit.</param>
/// <param name="lastContent">The string representing the text prior
/// to the edit.</param> 
/// <returns>Whether the edit was a deletion.</returns>
private bool IsDeletion(TextBox editor, string lastContent)
{
    return editor.TextLength < lastContent.Length;
}

Note that the above code uses the TextBox’s TextLength property. This is more efficient than finding the length of its Text property because evaluating the Text property requires all the characters to be copied to a new string.

Before getting either the location of the edit or the edit string itself, it is useful to compute the length of the edit string. This length is simply the absolute value of the difference in the lengths of the string currently in the TextBox and the last string we saw there. The Math class (in the System namespace) contains a static method Abs, which computes the absolute value of an int. We therefore have the following method:

/// <summary>
/// Gets the length of the text inserted or deleted.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="editor">The TextBox containing the result of the edit.</param>
/// <param name="lastContent">The string representing the text prior
/// to the edit.</param> 
/// <returns>The length of the edit.</returns>
private int GetEditLength(TextBox editor, string lastContent)
{
    return Math.Abs(editor.TextLength - lastContent.Length);
}

Now that we can determine whether an edit is a deletion or an insertion, and we can find the length of the edit string, it isn’t hard to find the beginning of the edit. First, suppose the edit is a deletion. The point at which the deletion occurred is the point at which the text caret now resides. We can find this point using the TextBox’s SelectionStart property. When there is no current selection - and there never will be immediately following an edit - this property gives the location of the text caret in the TextBox. Now consider the case in which the edit was an insertion. When text is inserted into a TextBox, the text caret ends up at the end of the inserted text. We need to find its beginning. We can do this by subtracting the length of the edit string from the text caret position. We therefore have the following method:

/// <summary>
/// Gets the location of the beginning of the edit.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="editor">The TextBox containing the result of the edit.</param>
/// <param name="isDeletion">Indicates whether the edit was a deletion.</param>
/// <param name="len">The length of the edit string.</param>
/// <returns>The location of the beginning of the edit.</returns>
private int GetEditLocation(TextBox editor, bool isDeletion, int len)
{
    if (isDeletion)
    {
        return editor.SelectionStart;
    }
    else
    {
        return editor.SelectionStart - len;
    }
}

The last piece of information we need is the string that was deleted or inserted. If the edit was a deletion, this string can be found in the previous TextBox contents. Its beginning is the point at which the edit occurred. We can therefore extract the deleted string from the previous contents using its Substring method. We pass this method the beginning index of the substring and its length, and it returns the substring, which is the deleted string. On the other hand, if the edit was an insertion, we can find the inserted string in the current TextBox contents by using its Substring in a similar way. We therefore have the following method:

/// <summary>
/// Gets the edit string.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="content">The current content of the TextBox.</param>
/// <param name="lastContent">The string representing the text prior
/// to the edit.</param> 
/// <param name="isDeletion">Indicates whether the edit was a deletion.</param>
/// <param name="editLocation">The location of the beginning of the edit.</param>
/// <param name="len">The length of the edit.</param>
/// <returns>The edit string.</returns>
private string GetEditString(string content, string lastContent, bool isDeletion, int editLocation, int len)
{
    if (isDeletion)
    {
        return lastContent.Substring(editLocation, len);
    }
    else
    {
        return content.Substring(editLocation, len);
    }
}

Using the methods above, we can modify the RecordEdit method to obtain the three values listed above to describe an edit. Once we have placed these three values onto the stack of editing history, we also need to update the string giving the previous TextBox contents. This should now be the current TextBox contents. We can then finish the method as shown above.

In order to implement Undo and Redo, we need to be able to insert and delete text in the TextBox. A string has two methods we can use to accomplish this:

• The Remove method takes as its parameters the beginning index and length of the portion to remove, and returns the result.
• The Insert method takes as its parameters the index at which the string should be inserted, and the string to insert. It returns the result.

Given the location of the edit along with the edit string itself, we can easily provide the parameters to the appropriate method above. Furthermore, it is not hard to set the location of the text caret using the TextBox’s SelectionStart property - we just need to be sure to add the length of the edit string if we are inserting text. The following method therefore performs a given edit, updating the string containing the last contents of the TextBox as well (we assume this string is called _lastText):

/// <summary>
/// Performs the given edit on the contents of the given TextBox.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="editor">The TextBox to edit.</param>
/// <param name="isDeletion">Indicates whether the edit is a deletion.</param>
/// <param name="loc">The location of the beginning of the edit.</param>
/// <param name="text">The text to insert or delete.</param>
private void DoEdit(TextBox editor, bool isDeletion, int loc, string text)
{
    if (isDeletion)
    {
        _lastText = editor.Text.Remove(loc, text.Length);
        editor.Text = _lastText;
        editor.SelectionStart = loc;
    }
    else
    {
        _lastText = editor.Text.Insert(loc, text);
        editor.Text = _lastText;
        editor.SelectionStart = loc + text.Length;
    }
}

We can now implement event handlers for Undo and Redo. We can obtain the description of the edit from the stack of editing history for an Undo, or from the stack of undo history for a Redo. This description gives us the type of edit (i.e., either insertion or deletion), the beginning position of the edit, and the inserted or deleted string. To implement a Redo, we simply do this edit, but to implement an Undo, we must do the opposite.