Copy annotation into a new annotation

Technical Support Apryse SDK
1

How do you create a new annotation that is an exact copy of another annotation?

I see one of the constructors on Annot takes in an Annot.

var newAnnot = new Annot(oldAnnot);

However, this does not create a new Annot object. Any changes I make to oldAnnot are also reflected on newAnnot. The "mp_annot" value is the same.

So next I tried to create a new Annot object via the Annot.Create method.

var newAnnot = Annot.Create(doc, oldAnnot.GetType(), oldAnnot.GetRect());
newAnnot.SetContents(oldAnnot.GetContents());
newAnnot.SetAppearance(oldAnnot.GetAppearance());

This didn't seem to work either though. I at least got a new object, but the properties aren't as expected. For example, the color of the new Annot is not set, when the color of the old Annot is red. Maybe I am missing something here.

Is there a way to do this that I am not seeing?

2

If you are on the latest version of PDFNet, then the following would be easiest.
ArrayList annots = new ArrayList(); annots.Add(oldAnnot); FDFDoc fdf = doc.FDFExtract(annots); doc.FDFMerge(fdf);

This will fully duplicate the annotation, though it would be positioned directly over the original one. To get the one just added, it will be the last annot on the page in question.

Annot last_annot_added_to_page = page.GetAnnot(page.GetNumAnnots()-1);

3

Thanks for the reply, Ryan!

Is there any way to accomplish this without adding it to the doc? This seems like a fairly expensive way to do this.

To give some context, I am trying to keep an old copy of an annotation around for when the user modifies the annotation. For example, say a user draws a line that is colored red. They then change it to be green. I want to give the user the option to undo that modification and set it back to red. My idea was that if I had a previous copy, I could just simply replace the new annotation with the old one, effectively undoing whatever it is that they did.