12.10.4 Adapting code using the old defadvice

A lot of code uses the old defadvice mechanism, which is largely made obsolete by the new advice-add, whose implementation and semantics is significantly simpler.

An old advice such as:

(defadvice previous-line (before next-line-at-end
                                 (&optional arg try-vscroll))
  "Insert an empty line when moving up from the top line."
  (if (and next-line-add-newlines (= arg 1)
           (save-excursion (beginning-of-line) (bobp)))
      (progn
        (beginning-of-line)
        (newline))))

could be translated in the new advice mechanism into a plain function:

(defun previous-line--next-line-at-end (&optional arg try-vscroll)
  "Insert an empty line when moving up from the top line."
  (if (and next-line-add-newlines (= arg 1)
           (save-excursion (beginning-of-line) (bobp)))
      (progn
        (beginning-of-line)
        (newline))))

Obviously, this does not actually modify previous-line. For that the old advice needed:

(ad-activate 'previous-line)

whereas the new advice mechanism needs:

(advice-add 'previous-line :before #'previous-line--next-line-at-end)

Note that ad-activate had a global effect: it activated all pieces of advice enabled for that specified function. If you wanted to only activate or deactivate a particular advice, you needed to enable or disable that advice with ad-enable-advice and ad-disable-advice. The new mechanism does away with this distinction.

An around advice such as:

(defadvice foo (around foo-around)
  "Ignore case in `foo'."
  (let ((case-fold-search t))
    ad-do-it))
(ad-activate 'foo)

could translate into:

(defun foo--foo-around (orig-fun &rest args)
  "Ignore case in `foo'."
  (let ((case-fold-search t))
    (apply orig-fun args)))
(advice-add 'foo :around #'foo--foo-around)

Regarding the advice’s class, note that the new :before is not quite equivalent to the old before, because in the old advice you could modify the function’s arguments (e.g., with ad-set-arg), and that would affect the argument values seen by the original function, whereas in the new :before, modifying an argument via setq in the advice has no effect on the arguments seen by the original function. When porting a before advice which relied on this behavior, you’ll need to turn it into a new :around or :filter-args advice instead.

Similarly an old after advice could modify the returned value by changing ad-return-value, whereas a new :after advice cannot, so when porting such an old after advice, you’ll need to turn it into a new :around or :filter-return advice instead.