# Control Structures

Control structures in RainerScript are similar in semantics to a lot of other mainstream languages such as C, Java, Javascript, Ruby, Bash etc. So this section assumes the reader is familiar with semantics of such structures, and goes about describing RainerScript implementation in usage-example form rather than by formal-definition and detailed semantics documentation.

RainerScript supports following control structures:

## if

    if ($msg contains "important") then {
       if ( $.foo != "" ) then set $.foo = $.bar & $.baz;
       action(type="omfile" file="/var/log/important.log" template="outfmt")
    }

## if/else-if/else

    if ($msg contains "important") then {
       set $.foo = $.bar & $.baz;
       action(type="omfile" file="/var/log/important.log" template="outfmt")
    } else if ($msg startswith "slow-query:") then {
       action(type="omfile" file="/var/log/slow_log.log" template="outfmt")
    } else {
       set $.foo = $.quux;
       action(type="omfile" file="/var/log/general.log" template="outfmt")
    }

## foreach

A word of caution first: there often is a misunderstanding in regard to foreach: this construct only works on JSON structures. Actually, we should have rejected the proposal for “foreach” at the time it was made, but now it is too late.

So please be warned: there is no general concept of an “array” inside the script language. This is intentional as we do not wanted to get it too complex. Where you can use arrays is for some config objects and a select set of comparisons, but nowhere else.

If you parsed JSON, foreach can iterate both JSON arrays and JSON objects inside this parsed JSON. As opposed to JSON array-iteration (which is ordered), JSON object-iteration accesses key-values in arbitrary order (is unordered).

For the foreach invocation below:

    foreach ($.i in $.collection) do {
       ...
    }

Say `$.collection` holds an array `[1, "2", {"a": "b"}, 4]`, value of `$.i` across invocations would be `1`, `"2"`, `{"a" : "b"}` and `4`.

Note that `$.collection` must have been parsed from JSON (via mmjsonparse).

When `$.collection` holds an object `{"a": "b", "c" : [1, 2, 3], "d" : {"foo": "bar"}}`, value of `$.i` across invocations would be `{"key" : "a", "value" : "b"}`, `{"key" : "c", "value" : [1, 2, 3]}` and `{"key" : "d", "value" : {"foo" : "bar"}}` (not necessarily in the that order). In this case key and value will need to be accessed as `$.i!key` and `$.i!value` respectively.

Here is an example of a nested foreach statement:

    foreach ($.quux in $!foo) do {
       action(type="omfile" file="./rsyslog.out.log" template="quux")
       foreach ($.corge in $.quux!bar) do {
          reset $.grault = $.corge;
          action(type="omfile" file="./rsyslog.out.log" template="grault")
          if ($.garply != "") then
              set $.garply = $.garply & ", ";
          reset $.garply = $.garply & $.grault!baz;
       }
    }

Again, the itereted items must have been created by parsing JSON.

Please note that asynchronous-action calls in foreach-statement body should almost always set `action.copyMsg` to `on`. This is because action calls within foreach usually want to work with the variable loop populates (in the above example, `$.quux` and `$.corge`) which causes message-mutation and async-action must see message as it was in a certain invocation of loop-body, so they must make a copy to keep it safe from further modification as iteration continues. For instance, an async-action invocation with linked-list based queue would look like:

    foreach ($.quux in $!foo) do {
        action(type="omfile" file="./rsyslog.out.log" template="quux
               queue.type="linkedlist" action.copyMsg="on")
    }

Note well where foreach does not work:

    set $.noarr = ["192.168.1.1", "192.168.2."];
    foreach ($.elt in $.noarr) do {
        ...
    }

This is the case because the assignment does not create a JSON array.

## call

Details here: The rsyslog “call” statement

## continue

A NOP, useful e.g. inside the `then` part of an if-structure.

See also

Help with configuring/using `Rsyslog`:

- Mailing list - best route for general questions

- GitHub: rsyslog source project - detailed questions, reporting issues that are believed to be bugs with `Rsyslog`

See also

Contributing to `Rsyslog`:

- Source project: rsyslog project README.

- Documentation: rsyslog-doc project README

Copyright 2008-2023 Rainer Gerhards (Großrinderfeld), and Others.