That solution allows to read logs from file and just send them to remote syslog/graylog server. Logs will not influent on current syslog settings, you won’t need to filter them out of any syslog facility (like local7), all you need – the rsyslog (I’ve used v8).

My task was to send logs which wrote by java application (if I’m right log4j was used), they were rotated by logrotate with truncation, so few specific options were added.
I replaced %APP-NAME% in rsyslog’s template(RSYSLOG_SyslogProtocol23Format) to be able differentiate from which files log messages were read.

As for me, it’s better to write logs in format which allow them to be parsed easily or send them right to remote location , but if you need to do it quickly without modification of application it’s appropriate solution. Just copy config below in file like  /etc/rsyslog.d/99-graylog.conf and modify TARGET.ADDRESS, TARGET.PORT, app_ tag and File setting according to your environment.

module(load="imfile")

template(
name="SyslogProtocol23Format_modified" type="string"
string="<%PRI%>1 %TIMESTAMP:::date-rfc3339% %HOSTNAME% %syslogtag%%$.suffix% %PROCID% %MSGID% %STRUCTURED-DATA% %msg%\n"
)

ruleset(name="sendToLogserver") {
action(type="omfwd" Target="TARGET.ADDRESS" Port="TARGET.PORT" Template="SyslogProtocol23Format_modified")
}

ruleset(name="app_logs") {
set $.suffix=re_extract($!metadata!filename, "(.*)/([^/]*)", 0, 2, "unknown.log");
call sendToLogserver
stop
}

input(
type="imfile"
File="/var/log/app_logs/*.log"
Tag="app_"
Ruleset="app_logs"
freshStartTail="on"
addMetadata="on"
)

In my case application wrote multi-line log messages, so startmsg.regex was used. Also logs were rotated by logrotate with truncate method, additional option reopenOnTruncate was used. So my input section looked like:

input(
type="imfile"
File="/var/log/app_logs/*.log"
Tag="app_"
Ruleset="app_logs"
freshStartTail="on"
addMetadata="on"
startmsg.regex="^[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2} "
reopenOnTruncate="on"
)