Why my async function doesn't await to the Promise in JavaScript?

Question

My code is the following:

const match = async (tender, searchCriteria) => {

  const tenderAccount = await tenderAccountController.findOrCreate(
    tender,
    searchCriteria,
  );

  if (searchCriteria.emailFrequency !== 'real-time') {
    return null;
  }

  // Notify Stakeholders
  await notifyStakeholders(tender, tenderAccount, searchCriteria);
};

This function "match" is called inside a for loop [for (const searchCriteria of searchCriterias) {}]

findOrCreate function is the following:

exports.findOrCreate = async (tender, searchCriteria) => {
    console.log("Search Criteria Name: " + searchCriteria.name)
    console.log("Tender Name: " + tender.name)

    // Check if it already exists
    let doc = await TenderAccount.findOne({
        tender: tender._id,
        account: searchCriteria.account._id
    })

    console.log("Doc: " + doc)
  
    if(doc) {
        // If it exists, update searchCriterias
        await TenderAccount.updateOne({ _id: doc._id }, { $addToSet: { searchCriterias: searchCriteria } })

        return doc;
    } else {
        doc = await TenderAccount.create({
            tender,
            account: searchCriteria.account,
            searchCriterias: [searchCriteria],
            dueDate: tender.submissionDeadlineDate
        })

        return doc;
    }
};

My problem is that it doesn't await to findOne query. It just complete all the inital loop (searchcriteria loop) and when loop ended it returns the query result. In my console I got this:

Search Criteria Name: test-sc
Tender Name: test-tender
Search Criteria Name: test2-sc
Tender Name: test2-tender
Search Criteria Name: test3-sc
Tender Name: test3-tender
Doc: null
Doc: null
Doc: null

And I don't understand it, it supose to console.log the doc after the tender name console.log right?

I will appreciate your answers.

Answer 1

When you call an async function without calling await , it will continue execution without waiting for the promise to be resolved. So if your for loop looks like: for (...) match(...) instead of for (...) await match(...) , it will execute all matches immedietly one after the other hence why the Search Criteria Name and Tender Name all get printed first in a row.

Adding await to the match call should give the result you were expecting.