How to programmatically sign in to the administration area from a module?

Question

I'm trying to create a module which logs in a retrieved user to the administration panel. (we're talking admins, not customers :) ) I found the following post on how to do this: How to perform auto-login in Magento2 admin?

The problem with my module is that it doesn't seem to be able to log in. Once I've retrieved the user data the sign in code processes without errors and I'm redirected to the admin panel login screen without being logged in. Besides that there is an addition setAreaCode function. However whenever I try to use that Magento tells me the area code is already set (to frontend as that's where the route is coming from).

I have the following code:

<?php

namespace Adwise\Authwise\Controller\Index;

use Magento\Framework\App\Action\Context;
use Magento\Framework\App\State;
use Magento\Framework\ObjectManagerInterface;
use Magento\Framework\View\Result\PageFactory;

class Index extends \Magento\Framework\App\Action\Action {

    protected $pageFactory;

    protected $objectManager;

    /**
     * @var
     */
    private $_state;

    public function __construct(Context $context, PageFactory $pageFactory, ObjectManagerInterface $objectManager, State $state) {
        $this->pageFactory = $pageFactory;
        $this->objectManager = $objectManager;
        $this->helper = $this->objectManager->create('Adwise\Authwise\Helper\Data');
        $this->_state = $state;

        return parent::__construct($context);
    }

    public function execute() {

        $this->_request->setPathInfo('/admin');

    //SOME CODE TO GET THE USER DATA FROM SSO SERVER

                $user = $this->_objectManager->get('Magento\User\Model\User')->loadByUsername($userSsoObject['email']);

                $session = $this->_objectManager->get('Magento\Backend\Model\Auth\Session');
                $session->setUser($user);
                $session->processLogin();

                if ($session->isLoggedIn()) {
                    $cookieManager = $this->_objectManager->get('Magento\Framework\Stdlib\CookieManagerInterface');
                    $cookieValue = $session->getSessionId();
                    if ($cookieValue) {
                        $sessionConfig = $this->_objectManager->get('Magento\Backend\Model\Session\AdminConfig');
                        $cookiePath = str_replace('autologin.php', 'index.php', $sessionConfig->getCookiePath());
                        $cookieMetadata = $this->_objectManager->get('Magento\Framework\Stdlib\Cookie\CookieMetadataFactory')
                            ->createPublicCookieMetadata()
                            ->setDuration(3600)
                            ->setPath($cookiePath)
                            ->setDomain($sessionConfig->getCookieDomain())
                            ->setSecure($sessionConfig->getCookieSecure())
                            ->setHttpOnly($sessionConfig->getCookieHttpOnly());
                        $cookieManager->setPublicCookie($session->getName(), $cookieValue, $cookieMetadata);
                        if (class_exists('Magento\Security\Model\AdminSess‌​ionsManager')) {
                            /** @var \Magento\Security\Model\AdminSessionsManager $adminSessionManager */
                            $adminSessionManager = $this->_objectManager->get('Magento\Security\Model\AdminSess‌​ionsManager');
                            $adminSessionManager->processLogin();
                        }
                    }

                    /** @var \Magento\Backend\Model\UrlInterface $backendUrl */
                    $backendUrl = $this->_objectManager->get('Magento\Backend\Model\UrlInterface');
                    $path = $backendUrl->getStartupPageUrl();
                    $url = $backendUrl->getUrl($path);
                    $url = str_replace('autologin.php', 'index.php', $url);
                    header('Location:  ' . $url);
                    exit;
                }

                return $this->_response;

            }
        }
    }
}

Any suggestions as the why it's not working?

Answer 1

Ok so basically the solution consisted of two parts. First of all I had to use the emulate adminhtml function from the state class. After that I was completely baffled by the fact that the sessions were being set and everything pointed to the fact that I was logged in. After comparing the sessions the session name turned out to be PHPSID in stead of the 'admin' which it should be. Changing the session name actually solved my problem.