.NET Core include folder in publish

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>

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.

There is simple and useful solution:

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

You can find more tricks here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/project-json-to-csproj