how to exclude directories and file zipping a directory?

I simply make a guess what you want.

-x ".*"

exclude all files beginning with a dot

do it like:

-x .\*

exclude all files (with a dot in the filename)

do it like:

-x \*.\*

--

-x "app/bower_components" -x "node_modules"

exclude this directory and all files in it

do it like:

-x app/bower_components/\* -x node_modules/\*

--

-x "*.zip"

exclude all zip-Files

do it like:

-x \*.zip

You exclude node_modules twice

exclude all node_modules folders in all folders.

zip -r node.zip . -x "**/node_modules/*"

Assuming your directory is a git repository (and judging by the question, it very likely is), you can add directories that you want to exclude to the .gitignore file and use the git archive command to zip contents of your directory:

git archive --format=zip HEAD -o zipfile.zip

In your example, the .gitignore file would have to look like this:

node_modules
app/bower_components

Something like this should do the trick:

zip -r zipped.zip dir1/ -x */\.* *.git* \.* *.zip *.csv *.json *.rb *.bak *.swp *.back *.merge *.txt *.sh dir1/node_modules/**\* dir1/bower_components/**\* dir1/dist/**.*

Where following -x is a list of directories and file (extension) types to exclude.

This works perfect for me on Ubuntu 16.04:

sudo zip -r /home/user/backup/$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")/home_user.zip /home/user -x "*backup*" -x "*.cache*" -x "*test*"

in every project skip node_modules like this:

for i in */; do zip -r "${i%/}.zip" "$i" -x "*/\node_modules/*" ; done

In the folder you want to be zipped:

zip -r abc.zip . -x "node_modules/**" -x "*.git/**"