I created a project initially with abstractuser so I could add additional fields to users profiles as well as set session variables during user login. Ive realised that abstractuser still has a need for the username field even though I have set authentication field to be email. I have tried setting username = None in the model but it throws an error during makemigrations saying unknown field ‘username’ specified for CustomUser.

If I change the base class from abstract user to abstractbaseuser I still get the error mentioned above when makemigrations.

code below, help would be very appreciated.

models.py

from django.db import models
from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractBaseUser, BaseUserManager, PermissionsMixin


class UserManager(BaseUserManager):
    def create_user(self, email, password=None, **extra_fields):
        if not email:
            raise ValueError('The Email field must be set')

        user = self.model(email=self.normalize_email(email), **extra_fields,)
        user.set_password(password)
        user.save(using=self._db)
        print("user save from UserManager.create_user method")
        return user

    def create_superuser(self, email, password=None, **extra_fields):
        user = self.create_user(email, password=password, **extra_fields,)
        user.is_staff = True
        user.is_superuser = True
        user.save(using=self._db)
        return user


class CustomUser(AbstractBaseUser, PermissionsMixin):
    username = None
    email = models.EmailField(unique=True, db_index=True)
    first_name = models.CharField(max_length=30)
    last_name = models.CharField(max_length=30)
    phone = models.IntegerField(null=False, blank=False)
    is_verified = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    is_active = models.BooleanField(default=True)
    is_staff = models.BooleanField(default=False)

    objects = UserManager()

    USERNAME_FIELD = 'email'
    REQUIRED_FIELDS = ['phone']

    def __str__(self):
        return self.email

    def get_full_name(self):
        return f"{self.first_name} {self.last_name}"

forms.py

from django import forms
from django.contrib.auth.forms import UserCreationForm, UserChangeForm
from members.models import CustomUser


class CustomUserCreationForm(UserCreationForm):

    class Meta:
        model = CustomUser
        fields = UserCreationForm.Meta.fields + ('phone',)


class CustomerUserChangeForm(UserChangeForm):
    class Meta:
        model = CustomUser
        fields = UserChangeForm.Meta.fields

admin.py

from django import forms
from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.auth.models import Group
from django.contrib.auth.admin import UserAdmin
from django.contrib.auth.forms import ReadOnlyPasswordHashField
from django.core.exceptions import ValidationError
from .models import CustomUser


class UserCreationForm(forms.ModelForm):
    """ form to create new users, includes required fields and repeated password """
    password1 = forms.CharField(label="Password", widget=forms.PasswordInput)
    password2 = forms.CharField(label="Password confirmation", widget=forms.PasswordInput)

    class Meta:
        model = CustomUser
        fields = ("email", "phone",)

    def clean_password2(self):
        """ check both passwords match"""
        password1 = self.cleaned_data.get("password1")
        password2 = self.cleaned_data.get("password2")
        if password1 and password2 and password1 != password2:
            raise ValidationError("Passwords don't match")
        return password2

    def save(self, commit=True):
        user = super().save(commit=False)
        user.set_password(self.cleaned_data["password1"])
        if commit:
            user.save()
        return user


class UserChangeForm(forms.ModelForm):
    """ form to update users, includes all fields and password hash """
    password = ReadOnlyPasswordHashField()

    class Meta:
        model = CustomUser
        fields = ("email", "password", "phone", "is_active", "is_staff")

class CustomUserAdmin(UserAdmin):
    add_form = UserCreationForm
    form = UserChangeForm
    model = CustomUser
    list_display = ["email", "phone"]
    search_fields = ["email", "first_name", "last_name"]
    fieldsets = [
        ("Access info", {"fields": ["email", "passsword"]}),
        ("Personal info", {"fields": ["phone"]}),
    ]
    add_fieldsets = [
        (
            None,
             {
                "classes": ["wide"],
                "feilds": ["email", "first_name", "last_name", "phone", "password1", password2"],},
        ),
    ]
    search_fields = ["email"]
    ordering = ["email"]

admin.site.register(CustomUser, CustomUserAdmin)

admin.site.unregister(Group)

Do I need to completely remove all migrations, truncate customuser table in db and start migrations again if I want to change from abstractuser to abstractbaseuser?