Access to timestamp in C - syslog ng

Question

I'm working on a C project, with client/server syslog communication with a Rpi. I have been asked to use syslog ng and I'd like to access to timestamp.

From what I found here :

Where the timestamp comes from depends on the type of log data you're sending through.

Plus :

If your data is forwarded by a syslog service, there is a timestamp embedded in the header that we can pull out and use.

So it's possible to pull out the timestamp. But how ?

Answer 1

If you use syslog-ng, it handles two different time stamps:

• the one, when the message was actually received
• the one included in the syslog message

These are accessible through macros. You can read more about it at https://www.balabit.com/sites/default/files/documents/syslog-ng-ose-3.7-guides/en/syslog-ng-ose-v3.7-guide-admin/html-single/index.html#reference-macros