I am trying to check if a name already exists on a Firebase Realtime Database that is structured as follows:

Here is my code:

const players = Firebase.database().ref("players");

function nameCheck() {
        console.log(name);

        players
        .orderByChild('settlement_name')
        .equalTo(name)
        .once('value')
        .then(snapshot => {
            if(snapshot.exists()){
                let playerData = snapshot.val();
                console.log(playerData)
                setError('Settlement name already exists')
                return playerData
            } else {
                console.log('Settlement name not found');
            }
        })
    }

Can anyone tell me why this function is not correctly identifying when a name exists? I am logging the name at the start of the function and it matches those on the database, yet it will only return that the name is not found.

Thank you kindly. 🙂