Using Impersonation Batch Files and RunAs to Assist Web Application Testing

The current ASP.NET 3.5 Web application I am working on uses Integrated Windows Authentication to determine group membership and their associated user permissions. While this is great as the users don't have to ever enter login details, the issue is that it is difficult for UAT testers to test functionality under different roles. Never fear... to facilitate ease of testing, you can use the "runas" functionality in Windows 2000/2003/2008/XP/Vista to allow users to impersonate different test users in Active Directory.



For example, you can use the following "PP_Test_ImpersonateSuperUser.bat" file to impersonate a Super User without logging off and logging in as that user. It will also open up IE for the http://pp-test web site (an intranet site).

@ECHO ******Running as SUPER USER (IMTEST11); password is SuperUsersPassWord

@ECHO OFF

COLOR 0A



runas /user:APAC\imtest11 /savecred "%ProgramFiles%/Internet Explorer/iexplore.exe \"pp-test\""



pause

You can now test to your hearts content without having to log off your normal Windows account or logging on into Terminal Services on another machine as a different user.