await doesn't seem to wait till the async call is finished - ecmascript-6

Question

I have the async function which uses await calls and I thought that when you use await, it should pause the function execution until the value it received. For some reason, it doesn't work with me.
Here's my function (it is inside a class):
async userExistsInDB(email) {
let userExists;
await MongoClient.connect('mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/notificator', async(err, db) => {
if (err) throw err;
let collection = db.collection('users');
userExists = await collection.find({email: email}).limit(1).count() > 0;
console.log("INSIDE:\n", userExists);
db.close();
});
console.log("OUTSIDE:\n", userExists);
return userExists;
}
And here's how I call it in another function inside the same class:
async getValidationErrors(formData) {
let userExists = await this.userExistsInDB(formData.email);
console.log("ANOTHER FUNC:\n", userExists);
}
So, I get the following output:
OUTSIDE:
undefined
ANOTHER FUNC:
undefined
INSIDE:
true
although the value INSIDE: true I expect to get printed the first.
Basically, what I need is to get the boolean value userExists from the userExistsInDB function and use it in other code.
What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

await only works with promises, so MongoClient.connect(…) would need to return a promise. Yet, you are using it as a callback API, and even with an async (promise-returning) callback function, which is not gonna work. Assuming mongo returns promises if you don't pass a callback, your code should look like
async function userExistsInDB(email) {
let db = await MongoClient.connect('mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/notificator');
let collection = db.collection('users');
let userExists = (await collection.find({email: email}).limit(1).count()) > 0;
db.close();
return userExists;
}
though ideally you'd rather do
async function userExistsInDB(email) {
let db = await MongoClient.connect('mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/notificator');
try {
let collection = db.collection('users');
let userCount = (await collection.find({email: email}).limit(1).count();
return userCount > 0;
} finally {
db.close();
}
}