fix(syslog): quote payloadKey path to prevent VRL evaluation as expression

[vparfonov]

Description

Root Cause:

The payloadKey path (e.g., .message) was injected unquoted into the VRL template:
payload_key = .message # evaluates as VRL expression, reads the VALUE of .message

This resolved .message to its runtime value (e.g., "Hello World"), which was then treated as a field path looking for a field literally named "Hello World", which doesn't exist.

For payloadKey: "{.message}" this only produced noisy warnings (since .message was left unchanged). For any other field (e.g., {.kubernetes.namespace_name}), it silently failed to set .message to the intended value.

Fix:

Quote the path as a string literal and strip the leading dot before splitting:

payload_key = ".message"   # string literal, stays as a path
  if starts_with(payload_key, ".") {
    payload_key = slice!(payload_key, 1)
  }
  path = split!(payload_key, ".")
  value, err = get(., path)

/cc @Clee2691
/assign @jcantrill

Links

• Depending on PR(s):
• GitHub issue:
• JIRA: https://redhat.atlassian.net/browse/LOG-9562
• Enhancement proposal:

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[vparfonov]

/test functional-target

[vparfonov]

/test functional-target

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ci/prow/functional-target	43cb3d5	link	true	/test functional-target

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[vparfonov]

/test functional-target