Run search as a different user?

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chkk

Is it possible to run search (normal and/or advanced) and the display of the search results as a different user?

The planned use case is that users should be able to search for all documents (possibly with admin rights or a dedicated search user) and only limit access to the individual documents based on the logged in user's rights to allow users to request document access if necessary.

This is a site where the availability of the documents is not yet confidential information, just the attachments and the full metadata details.

Regards,
Chris

afaust

This is something that is not possible by configuration alone. Alfresco has no end-user feature to search "as another user". But it has code-level features to execute sections of code with a different user identity (AuthenticationUtils.runAs(RunAsWork, String)), and this would allow you to develop a custom search backend that executes the search as a different user and then filters the result again based on the actual user. Be aware though that this will result in a significant performance impact due to multiple permission checking and break functionality such as pagination (due to post-filtering), that you would need to compensate for or live with.

Regards
Axel