Impersonate a Laravel user

Authenticate as another user while maintaining previous authentication.

This works by using Laravels Auth::onceUsingId() feature where you can authenticate as a user for that request only. A middleware will check if you're impersonating via a session variable and activate Auth::onceUsingId() for every request until you stop impersonating.

Installation

1. Composer

Execute the following command to get the latest version of the package:

composer require bizhub/impersonate

2. Laravel

Add CheckIfImpersonating middleware to app\Http\Kernel.php

  protected $middlewareGroups = [
      'web' => [
          // ...
          
          \Bizhub\Impersonate\Middleware\CheckIfImpersonating::class,
      ]
  ];

Add CanImpersonate trait to your User model

namespace App;

use Bizhub\Impersonate\Traits\CanImpersonate;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use CanImpersonate;
    
    // ...
}

Usage

// Retrieve your user model
$user = User::find(1);

// Start impersonating
$user->impersonate();

// Redirect/reload the page

// ...

// Stop impersonating
Auth::user()->stopImpersonating();