feat: add null check to github calls to prevent unwanted round-trips

[lmaosoggypancakes]

Description

an investigation of the insanely high loading times on many pages showed that Rails spents an unreasonable amount of time
making round-trip calls to github (for the context of submitting assignments through github integration)

Motivation and Context

How Has This Been Tested?

load times on the "submit assignment" page is drastically lower (often ~80ms faster at least, but many cases much faster)
other pages benefit from this simple fix too

Types of changes

• Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)

Checklist:

• I have run rubocop and erblint for style check. If you haven't, run overcommit --install && overcommit --sign to use pre-commit hook for linting
• My change requires a change to the documentation, which is located at Autolab Docs
• I have updated the documentation accordingly, included in this PR

Other issues / help required

If unsure, feel free to submit first and we'll help you along.

[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The connected? method in GithubIntegration was modified to return false early if either GitHub client ID or client secret is unconfigured, before proceeding to check authorization limits.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
GitHub Integration Configuration Check app/models/github_integration.rb	Added early return in connected? method to validate GitHub credentials (client_id and client_secret) are present before checking authorization limits

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~5 minutes

• Single file modified with straightforward guard clause addition
• Logic change is localized to one method with clear intent
• No structural or architectural modifications required

Pre-merge checks and finishing touches

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 0.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.	You can run @coderabbitai generate docstrings to improve docstring coverage.

✅ Passed checks (2 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title Check	✅ Passed	The PR title "feat: add null check to github calls to prevent unwanted round-trips" directly and accurately describes the main change summarized in the raw output. The title specifies both what is being added (a null check) and why (to prevent unwanted round-trips), which aligns with the code change that short-circuits the connected? method when GitHub client configuration is blank. The title is concise, clear, and specific enough for quick understanding without unnecessary verbosity.
Description Check	✅ Passed	The PR description provides all essential information required by the template: a clear description of the change and the problem it solves (high loading times due to excessive GitHub API calls), testing information showing measurable performance improvements (~80ms faster load times), and properly filled checklist items indicating the code passed style checks. However, the description structure deviates slightly from the template—the "Motivation and Context" section appears empty while its content is integrated into the "Description" section. Despite this formatting deviation, the description is substantially complete with all critical information provided, allowing reviewers to understand the change, its rationale, and testing approach.

✨ Finishing touches

• 📝 Generate docstrings

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Post copyable unit tests in a comment
• Commit unit tests in branch josef_speed_investigation

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 0

🧹 Nitpick comments (1)

app/models/github_integration.rb (1)

166-168: Excellent optimization to prevent unnecessary API calls!

The early return when GitHub credentials are not configured successfully prevents the expensive check_github_authorization call, which aligns perfectly with the PR objective of reducing round-trip times.

However, consider these optional style improvements for better Ruby idioms:

Apply this diff for more idiomatic Ruby style:

-    return false if Rails.configuration.x.github.client_id.blank? or
-                     Rails.configuration.x.github.client_secret.blank?
+    return false unless Rails.configuration.x.github.client_id.present? &&
+                        Rails.configuration.x.github.client_secret.present?

Rationale:

• Ruby style guides recommend ||/&& for boolean operations; or/and are for control flow
• Using present? is more consistent with the existing codebase (e.g., line 64: access_token.present?)
• The unless form reads more naturally for guard clauses

📜 Review details

Configuration used: CodeRabbit UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 674efe9 and 4760e96.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• app/models/github_integration.rb (1 hunks)

⏰ Context from checks skipped due to timeout of 90000ms. You can increase the timeout in your CodeRabbit configuration to a maximum of 15 minutes (900000ms). (2)

• GitHub Check: test
• GitHub Check: lint