In this episode, we tackle the really handy feature of user impersonation in Laravel — basically, letting admins log in "as" another user to help troubleshoot issues or perform actions for them. We start by discussing why the common approach of logging in by user ID (auth()->loginUsingId()
) is not a good idea, since it can mess with sessions and have security concerns.
Instead, we build a better solution! We create an impersonation controller, set up a simple form for admin to pick the user (by email, but you could use any unique identifier), and, after form validation, store an impersonate
key in the session. This marks which user the admin wants to pretend to be.
But we don't just switch the authentication over. Instead, we write some middleware that uses Laravel's Auth::onceUsingId()
for temporary authentication, so the admin is "logged in as" the user only while the session has this special flag — and doesn't lose their own session!
To make life easier, we add a Blade custom directive to check if an admin is currently impersonating a user, so we can display a "Stop Impersonating" link on the site wherever we want. We also go through setting up the logic for stopping impersonation (removing the session flag), making sure everything is secure and leverages CSRF protection.
By the end of this episode, you'll have a clean, safe way for admins to impersonate users in your Laravel app, and a neat way to return to their original account when they're done. No more session headaches, and you avoid the security pitfalls of less robust methods!