Speeding Up Your Sass Compilation in Vite and Webpack
A quick guide to adopting the modern Sass API
Sass compilation can be a speed bottleneck in your build, but it doesn’t have to be anymore.
(None of them is the username)
The term “username” is ambiguous. When designing a user model there are several kinds of names that are useful to include.
It’s time to start a new project. You want users, so the first thing you do is add a user model with username and password fields and – whoa, hold up.
What’s that username again? Is it the user’s email address? Is it an arbitrary nickname that the user can choose? Is it an automatically generated identifier that should never change?
It’s not for nothing that they say naming things is one of the hard problems in computer science. For modeling user accounts there are three different name fields that you probably want, and for the sake of avoiding confusion let’s not call any of them the username:
You probably noticed I did not include the user’s given and family names (and middle name and maiden name and…). Avoid collecting these as separate fields unless you need to, i.e. for official or legal purposes. Keep in mind that the preferred order of these names varies in different cultures (so avoid calling them “first name” and “last name”). And keep in mind that they may change over time. Names are hard.
We like Django for building backends. There are a number of ways to
extend Django’s default user model. Here’s our custom User
model that
meets the above guidelines:
from django.db import models
from django.contrib.auth.models import PermissionsMixin
from django.contrib.auth.base_user import AbstractBaseUser
class User(AbstractBaseUser, PermissionsMixin):
email = models.EmailField("email address", unique=True)
name = models.CharField("name", max_length=30, blank=True, unique=True)
date_joined = models.DateTimeField(_("date joined"), auto_now_add=True)
is_active = models.BooleanField(_("active"), default=True)
objects = UserManager()
USERNAME_FIELD = "email"
REQUIRED_FIELDS = []
def get_full_name(self):
return self.name
def get_short_name(self):
return self.name
Like all Django models, it has a default id
field which meets our
criteria for user id. There is a single name
field which is used
when Django needs to display the user’s name via the get_full_name
and
get_short_name
methods. And it has an email
field which enforces
uniqueness and is configured as Django’s USERNAME_FIELD (which is
really the login).
(Note: This model requires a custom UserManager
– I won’t include that
here; see Vitor Freitas’ helpful How to Extend the Django User Model
article for details.)
Add this model to a new Django project (it’ll be easiest if you use it from the start), configure it using the AUTH_USER_MODEL setting, and you’ll be well on your way to never having to say the word “username” again.
Did we miss anything important? Let us know via Twitter!
A quick guide to adopting the modern Sass API
Sass compilation can be a speed bottleneck in your build, but it doesn’t have to be anymore.
CSS Working Group updates from July
Over the last month, the CSS Working Group has determined we can loosen containment restrictions for query containers, and agreed on a syntax for special-case support queries (like support for the gap property in a flex context, or support for align-content in a block flow context).
What I’ve been working on as an Invited Expert
The CSS Working Group has regular face-to-face meetings (hybrid online/in-person) throughout the year, and they always result in a flurry of activity! Here’s a rundown of some highlights from the last few months, with a focus on the features I maintain.