New in version 2.10.0: User impersonation was added.
After deploying your application, you may occasionally need to ‘impersonate’ another user in order to debug problems that your customers report or to see the application in the state that your customers are seeing it.
To impersonate another user you can use the impersonate()
method on the
AuthenticationComponent
. To impersonate a user you first need to load that
user from your application’s database:
// In a controller
public function impersonate()
{
$this->request->allowMethod(['POST']);
$currentUser = $this->request->getAttribute('identity');
// You should always check that the current user is allowed
// to impersonate other users first.
if (!$currentUser->isStaff()) {
throw new NotFoundException();
}
// Fetch the user we want to impersonate.
$targetUser = $this->Users->findById(
$this->request->getData('user_id')
)->firstOrFail();
// Enable impersonation.
$this->Authentication->impersonate($targetUser);
return $this->redirect($this->referer());
}
Once you have started to impersonate a user, all subsequent requests will have
$targetUser
as the active identity.
Once you are done impersonating a user, you can then end impersonation and revert
back to your previous identity using AuthenticationComponent
:
// In a controller
public function revertIdentity()
{
$this->request->allowMethod(['POST']);
// Make sure we are still impersonating a user.
if (!$this->Authentication->isImpersonating()) {
throw new NotFoundException();
}
$this->Authentication->stopImpersonating();
}
There are a few limitations to impersonation.
Your application must be using the Session
authenticator.
You cannot impersonate another user while impersonation is active. Instead
you must stopImpersonation()
and then start it again.