How to correctly save instance state of Fragments in back stack?

On the latest support library none of the solutions discussed here are necessary anymore. You can play with your Activity's fragments as you like using the FragmentTransaction. Just make sure that your fragments can be identified either with an id or tag.

The fragments will be restored automatically as long as you don't try to recreate them on every call to onCreate(). Instead, you should check if savedInstanceState is not null and find the old references to the created fragments in this case.

Here is an example:

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    if (savedInstanceState == null) {
        myFragment = MyFragment.newInstance();
        getSupportFragmentManager()
                .beginTransaction()
                .add(R.id.my_container, myFragment, MY_FRAGMENT_TAG)
                .commit();
    } else {
        myFragment = (MyFragment) getSupportFragmentManager()
                .findFragmentByTag(MY_FRAGMENT_TAG);
    }
...
}

Note however that there is currently a bug when restoring the hidden state of a fragment. If you are hiding fragments in your activity, you will need to restore this state manually in this case.

This is a very old answer.

I don't write for Android anymore so function in recent versions is not guaranteed and there won't be any updates to it.

This is the way I am using at this moment... it's very complicated but at least it handles all the possible situations. In case anyone is interested.

public final class MyFragment extends Fragment {
    private TextView vstup;
    private Bundle savedState = null;

    @Override
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        View v = inflater.inflate(R.layout.whatever, null);
        vstup = (TextView)v.findViewById(R.id.whatever);

        /* (...) */

        /* If the Fragment was destroyed inbetween (screen rotation), we need to recover the savedState first */
        /* However, if it was not, it stays in the instance from the last onDestroyView() and we don't want to overwrite it */
        if(savedInstanceState != null && savedState == null) {
            savedState = savedInstanceState.getBundle(App.STAV);
        }
        if(savedState != null) {
            vstup.setText(savedState.getCharSequence(App.VSTUP));
        }
        savedState = null;

        return v;
    }

    @Override
    public void onDestroyView() {
        super.onDestroyView();
        savedState = saveState(); /* vstup defined here for sure */
        vstup = null;
    }

    private Bundle saveState() { /* called either from onDestroyView() or onSaveInstanceState() */
        Bundle state = new Bundle();
        state.putCharSequence(App.VSTUP, vstup.getText());
        return state;
    }

    @Override
    public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
        super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
        /* If onDestroyView() is called first, we can use the previously savedState but we can't call saveState() anymore */
        /* If onSaveInstanceState() is called first, we don't have savedState, so we need to call saveState() */
        /* => (?:) operator inevitable! */
        outState.putBundle(App.STAV, (savedState != null) ? savedState : saveState());
    }

    /* (...) */

}

Alternatively, it is always a possibility to keep the data displayed in passive Views in variables and using the Views only for displaying them, keeping the two things in sync. I don't consider the last part very clean, though.

To correctly save the instance state of Fragment you should do the following:

1. In the fragment, save instance state by overriding onSaveInstanceState() and restore in onActivityCreated():

class MyFragment extends Fragment {

    @Override
    public void onActivityCreated(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onActivityCreated(savedInstanceState);
        ...
        if (savedInstanceState != null) {
            //Restore the fragment's state here
        }
    }
    ...
    @Override
    public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
        super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
        
        //Save the fragment's state here
    }

}

2. And important point, in the activity, you have to save the fragment's instance in onSaveInstanceState() and restore in onCreate().

class MyActivity extends Activity {

    private MyFragment 

    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        ...
        if (savedInstanceState != null) {
            //Restore the fragment's instance
            mMyFragment = getSupportFragmentManager().getFragment(savedInstanceState, "myFragmentName");
            ...
        }
        ...
    }
    
    @Override
    protected void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
        super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
            
        //Save the fragment's instance
        getSupportFragmentManager().putFragment(outState, "myFragmentName", mMyFragment);
    }

}