.NET Core include folder in publish

Question

I have the following folder structure for my .NET Core 2.1 project:

How can I include folder AppData and all of its subfolders and files when I publish the solution?

I tried adding this to .csproj file but it didn't work:

<ItemGroup>     <Folder Include="AppData\*" /> </ItemGroup> 

EDIT

I also tried with this and it didn't work:

<ItemGroup>     <Content Include="AppData\**" LinkBase="AppData" /> </ItemGroup> 

Answer 1

Adding this:

<ItemGroup>    <Content Include="AppData\**">      <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>    </Content>  </ItemGroup> 

to your .csproj file will copy AppData folder if it's not empty. For empty AppData folder you can use this workaround:

<Target Name="CreateAppDataFolder" AfterTargets="AfterPublish">   <MakeDir Directories="$(PublishDir)AppData" Condition="!Exists('$(PublishDir)AppData')" />  </Target> 

This will create AppData folder after publish if it won't be already included in output. Meaning this will create AppData folder only if it's empty while publishing.