exclude files from being sent over github actions - azure

Question

Im trying to find out if there is a way to exclude certain files from being sent over github actions, for example, i have a server and a client in the same repository. right now, both the server (node.js) and the client (its a react.js application) are being hosted together on azure app services. once the / is hit, it serves up the index.html file from the build folder.
however I am finding that hosting these two things together is taking its toll on the overall application, for example, it sometimes takes up to 10 seconds for the server to respond and return the index file to the client. I remember in my training some of my more senior devs didnt like to host the server and client together, and im starting to see why..
so I likely will need to split these up to improve performance, but before i go through a daunting task of splitting the repositories up. is there a way to specify in github actions in a workflow to ignore certain files/folders etc..
the only modification i've made to this is that i added an action to zip the application for faster upload to azure to improve workload performance.
here is my workflow:
# Docs for the Azure Web Apps Deploy action: https://github.com/Azure/webapps-deploy
# More GitHub Actions for Azure: https://github.com/Azure/actions
name: Build and deploy Node.js app to Azure Web App
on:
push:
branches:
- main
workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout#v2
- name: Set up Node.js version
uses: actions/setup-node#v1
with:
node-version: '14.x'
- name: npm install, build, and test
run: |
npm install
npm run build --if-present
npm run test --if-present
- name: Zip artifact for deployment
run: zip release.zip ./* -r
- name: Upload artifact for deployment job
uses: actions/upload-artifact#v2
with:
name: node-app
path: release.zip
deploy:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
needs: build
environment:
name: 'Production'
url: ${{ steps.deploy-to-webapp.outputs.webapp-url }}
steps:
- name: Download artifact from build job
uses: actions/download-artifact#v2
with:
name: node-app
- name: unzip artifact for deployment
run: unzip release.zip
- name: 'Deploy to Azure Web App'
id: deploy-to-webapp
uses: azure/webapps-deploy#v2
with:
app-name: 'Omitted'
slot-name: 'Production'
publish-profile: ${{SECRET}}
package: .

Answer 1

You could create a shell script that excludes the files you don't want.
In .github, create a new folder scripts. Inside the scripts folder, create a new file named exclude.sh.
In the exclude.sh, add the following:
zip -r [file_name.zip] [files/folder to zip] -x [file path/name to exclude]
In your workflow:
- name: unzip artifact for deployment
run: unzip file_name.zip