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Transactions are a common requirement for applications. They are needed when you want a set of updates either to all succeed or fail as a group. For a nice intro to some of the concepts check out Transactions.
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Unlike in the Java ecosystem, there are no well-established application servers that support transactions and no JavaScript specific standards for transactions.
However, this does not mean that you cannot use transactions with Node.js. Many of the databases and the recommended clients covered in the databases section support transactions. This makes it relatively easy to update multiple elements with the database within a transaction. Typically the clients provide a simple API to start, commit and rollback transactions or the equivalent can be done by submitting queries through the same APIs used to query and update data. Since these APIs vary by database, consult the documentation for the database you are using. As an example this section in the Node.js pg client documentation shows how to handle rollback when using transactions.
In the team's experience transactions work best with async/await versus generators and it is good to have a try/catch around the rollback sections in addition to those which do the commit.
Node.js applications are often structured to use microservices instead of a monolith which may limit the ability to leverage the transaction support in databases as not all elements being updated are updated through the same database connection. The related challenges are not specific to Node.js and there are common techniques that are used including:
In the teams experience Node.js applications will most often use the Saga pattern as opposed to 2 phase commit. When 2 phase commit is used it will have to depend on external support from an underlying data store. Some databases offer support to help with implementing the 2 phase commit technique, so read through the documentation for the database you are using if you are planning to use that technique.
If you want to read more in depth about these techniques and which one you might want to use, Saga: The new era of transactions in a microservices architecture covers them in more depth.
Some databases offer support to help with implementing the 2 phase commit technique, so read through the documentation for the database you are using if you are planning to use that technique.