Class BowireImpersonation

Namespace

Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Auth

Assembly

Kuestenlogik.Bowire.dll

An administrator looking at somebody else's workbench (#98).

public static class BowireImpersonation

Inheritance

object

BowireImpersonation

Inherited Members

object.GetType()

object.MemberwiseClone()

object.ToString()

object.Equals(object)

object.Equals(object, object)

object.ReferenceEquals(object, object)

object.GetHashCode()

Remarks

Why a cookie rather than a signed token. The workbench has some seventy direct fetch call sites and no central wrapper, so a header would mean touching all of them or patching global fetch — and a tool whose purpose is sending requests to other people's services is the last place to add a header to every outbound call by default. A cookie rides along on same-origin requests and needs no client change at all.

Why that is not a weaker choice. The cookie is a parameter, never an authority. On every request the server re-derives the real caller from their token and re-asks the directory whether they administer the install; the cookie only says whose slot to open. Forging it therefore buys nothing unless you are already an administrator — a stronger property than a signed token, which is only as good as its key and as the moment it was minted. An administrator who is demoted stops impersonating on their very next request, without anything having to expire.

Fields

CookieName

The cookie that names whose slot to open.

public const string CookieName = "bowire.act-as"

Field Value

string

Remarks

Deliberately not __Host- prefixed. That prefix requires the Secure attribute, and an embedded host reachable over plain HTTP on an internal network would then fail to set the cookie at all — silently, with impersonation appearing to do nothing. The prefix would buy protection against a sibling host writing the value, and the value is re-authorised against the caller's own token on every request anyway, so there is nothing to gain by writing it.

EndpointPath

The route that starts and ends a session, relative to the workbench's base path.

public const string EndpointPath = "/api/impersonation"

Field Value

string

Remarks

Named here because two places have to agree about it: the endpoint that maps it, and the middleware that must not record a request to it. Ending a session is already written to the log as end, and recording the DELETE as well puts the same event in twice, in two vocabularies.

Properties

Current

The impersonation in force on this execution context, or null when the caller is acting as themselves.

public static BowireImpersonationScope? Current { get; }

Property Value

BowireImpersonationScope

Methods

Enter(string, string)

Act as actingAs until the returned scope is disposed.

public static IDisposable Enter(string actor, string actingAs)

Parameters

actor string

actingAs string

Returns

IDisposable

Remarks

Restores the previous value rather than clearing it, for the same reason Enter(string) does: a nested scope is legitimate, and clearing would silently drop the outer one for the rest of the request.