Unicorn how to serialize parent folder and only specific children

Question

I need to serialize some custom WFFM save actions in my solution but would like to avoid needing to store each one in its own folder on the filesystem. Is there a way to indicate that I want to serialize /sitecore/system/Modules/Web Forms for Marketers/Settings/Actions/Save Actions and just one or two of its children and place the serialized children all into the same filesystem folder?

Answer 1

Unicorn 3 and above has an option to exclude child items under parent item. In your case you can use as below:

<include database="master" name="WFFMSaveActions" path="/sitecore/system/Modules/Web Forms for Marketers/Settings/Actions/Save Actions">
          <exclude path="/sitecore/system/Modules/Web Forms for Marketers/Settings/Actions/Save Actions/xxx"/>
          <exclude path="/sitecore/system/Modules/Web Forms for Marketers/Settings/Actions/Save Actions/YYY"/>
</include>

With unicorn 4 you can also exclude using namePatterns and templateIds:

<include database="master" name="WFFMSaveActions" path="/sitecore/system/Modules/Web Forms for Marketers/Settings/Actions/Save Actions">
          <exclude templateId="{3B4F2B85-778D-44F3-9B2D-BEFF1F3575E6}" />
          <exclude namePattern="^__Standard values$" />
</include>

This exclusion makes items not to be serialised by unicorn. More information about exclusions in unicorn can be found in this blog post

Answer 2

One way to do this using Unicorn 3 is with <exclude> and <except> elements. This can be done like so:

<include name="xxxxxx.Foundation.CustomWffmFieldTypes.SaveActions"
         database="master"
         path="/sitecore/system/Modules/Web Forms for Marketers/Settings/Actions/Save Actions">
  <exclude children="true">
    <except name="My Custom WFFM Save Action"/>
  </exclude>
</include>

This approach is described here: https://github.com/kamsar/Unicorn/blob/ce1e7aacdb65d53cffa617f8a11106dd70b944e0/src/Unicorn.Tests/Predicates/TestConfiguration.xml