Importing Log Files

Applications that need to log to a local file can write them in JSON format for easy importing into Seq.

The seq-import.exe command-line tool can read canonical JSON files created by Serilog and upload them through the Seq API.

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The SeqFlatFileImport tool from Octopus Deploy is an alternative that's capable of reading unstructured (plain text) and IIS log files.

Installation

Requires .NET 4.5 or better.

With Chocolatey:

choco install seq-import

Or, download the source code from GitHub and build/run locally.

Usage

The importer is a command-line application.

seq-import: Import JSON log files into Seq.

Usage:
    seq-import.exe <file> <server> [--apikey=<k>]
    seq-import.exe (-h | --help)

Options:
    -h --help     Show this screen.
    <file>        The file to import.
    <server>      The Seq server URL.
    --apikey=<k>  Seq API key.

Example:

seq-import.exe myapp.json https://my-seq --apikey=jhfaty89thfajkafhkl

The command will print a GUID ImportId, which will also be attached to the imported events in Seq.

Creating compatible JSON files with Serilog

The import tool uses Serilog's canonical JSON format. To create a file in this format, either:

• Specify a Serilog.Formatting.Json.JsonFormatter as the ITextFormatter for a log event sink;
• Use a sink from Serilog.Sinks.Json; or,
• Configure your logging library to write files using the format specified below.

File format

Newline-separated JSON is the only format currently supported. The fields are: