Does Rebex Syslog Client support "Structured Data"?

Question

Trying to use Rebex Syslog Client as a replacement for SyslogNet.

Being rather a beginner in terms of the Syslog concept in general, I cannot find a way to configure Structured Data as defined in this RFC:

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5424#section-6.3

While SyslogNet provides me with a class to fill StructuredDataElement elements with name value pairs, I find no way in Rebex Syslog Client.

My question

Is it possible to also send Structured Data with your library?

(If yes, how, if no, is there a hack/workaround?)

Answer 1

Unfortunately, the StructuredData are currently not supported.

The possible work around is to modify the raw syslog message data manually. It can be done like this:

// some structured-data (must conform to RFC 5424)
string structuredData = "[id1@1234 ex1=\"val1\" ex2=\"val2\"][id2@1234 ex3=\"val3\"]";

// prepare a syslog message without structured-data
var message = new SyslogMessage("Message body.")
{
    Severity = SyslogSeverity.Informational,
    Facility = SyslogFacility.User,
    ApplicationName = "Test",
    ProcessId = "123",
    MessageId = "456",
};

// get raw message representation in RFC 5424 format
var raw = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(message.Encode());

// find the last dash before the MSG part, it's the place for structured-data
int idx = raw.Length - message.Text.Length - 2;
if (raw[idx] != '-')
    throw new InvalidOperationException("Unexpected raw data.");

// construct SyslogMessage.Text with structured-data
message = new SyslogMessage(raw.Substring(0, idx) +
                            structuredData +
                            raw.Substring(idx + 1));

// set the Format to Plain to send raw data stored in the SyslogMessage.Text
client.Settings.Format = SyslogMessageFormat.Plain;

// send the message
client.Send(message);

Comments

Thank you very much, Lukas.