frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Show HN: Convert Large CSV/XLSX to JSON or XML in Browser

https://csvforge.com
41•Botlabs•1y ago
Hello HN, I'm excited to share a project I've been working on: A simple, fast way to process huge CSV and XLSX files directly in your browser and export them as clean JSON or XML

Here's a few things that makes this converter different: - runs in the browser - all parsing and conversion is client side can handle data any size data - automatically detects delimiters, encodings, and data types as it parses - Live preview with column renaming, search/replace, and data cleanup - Export to JSON or XML — clean, structured output that can be used for API or Databases

backstory: I built this tool for myself. I work with massive CSV and TXT files, some over 10GB, and opening them in Excel would freeze my laptop, some of the online converters only limits to a certain size, so I started learning Python and pandas but ended up wasting so much time trying different delimiters or fixing badly structured data just to make it usable, and I thought this would be a really fun project to build

I'd love some feedback. Thank you

URL: https://csvforge.com

Comments

sverhagen•1y ago
"Runs in the browser" and "client side" isn't as much of a selling point to me as it's made out to be. It's a claim that I can't really validate until it's too late. If it's a commercial service I'm going to have to pay for, then maybe you should go all the way in gaining my trust with whatever safeguards it takes, so that I no longer care if I upload my data to your server or not.
rustc•1y ago
> then maybe you should go all the way in gaining my trust with whatever safeguards it takes

What kind of safeguards are possible with a web app?

sverhagen•1y ago
I think this comes down to legally-enforceable contracts with some teeth. A lot of business seem okay to trust Google's cloud products, or Microsoft's? I think as private person with limited means for litigation, you're likely sol.
hahn-kev•1y ago
Yeah I really wish there was a way for this to be enforced by the browser that the end user could trust. It would have to be a standard, but outside of opening dev tools and toggling offline mode there's no way to be sure.

The funny thing is that it feels safer to download a desktop app and give it the same data even though it's usually much harder to validate if it's shipping your data somewhere else.

strogonoff•1y ago
There’s a cheap trick to make sure a website that claims to do everything client-side actually does everything client-side:

1. Open the site in an incognito window.

2. Turn off your Internet.

3. Do what you’ve got to do.

4. Close browser window.

As a bonus, and this makes it better than just flipping the offline switch in developer tools, if you turn off Internet in a way that keeps the browser thinking it’s online, you can also peek at whether any network requests are made (for pathological cases where the app does everything locally but phones home anyway).

Botlabs•1y ago
Sure, but you can validate it dev tools exist for a reason. Honestly, I just can’t afford the storage costs if users are uploading 50GB+ CSVs. It’d be a huge strain on any server, not to mention painfully slow for users. Running everything client side was the easiest and most practical way to build this MVP at least for me thanks for the feedback
o11c•1y ago
"Large" generally means "bigger than RAM"; 10GB is medium-sized these days since it fits in most people's RAM. Does the browser actually have the (web worker?) APIs needed to stream and "upload" and "download"?
shubhamjain•1y ago
I don't get it. Are JSON and XML files more friendly to import vs CSV files? I always assumed CSVs were the standard. Any reasons to prefer structured formats?

Shameless plug: I am working on a similar problem of Excel not being a great tool for large datasets. My desktop app[1] lets you import raw data files and query them using SQL. (The website needs to be updated, the app looks much better than the current screenshots).

[1]: https://textquery.app

Botlabs•1y ago
yes they are a lot easier to work with when inserting into the database
snappr021•1y ago
This type of thing is fairly trivial to create with ChatGPT running entirely locally in HTML.

A couple of kb of open standard vanilla js that does some simple things faster than legacy spreadsheets etc ever could.

Even to the point of creating invoices, reports etc based on standard filters stored in local storage…

oschvr•1y ago
Looks like you made it in lovable. It has that characteristic UI.

If so, how much time did it take you?

Botlabs•1y ago
thanks for your comment, it took me almost 3 weeks to build this
constantcrying•1y ago
I think it should go without saying, but never use this with anything more relevant than a hobby project.

Doing this with any kind of data you don't fully own (e.g. data from your company) is a terrible idea, from so many standpoints. That it is "allegedly" running locally is not making it much better.

I think my question to OP is, who is this for. Any developer can write up a convert for his own datasets, in basically any case I can think of where you are handling large amounts of data you are building a pipeline to do cleanup, renaming, conversion, etc. Who wants to have a part of that pipeline be uploading the data into the browser?

Solid – Why SRP Is Wrong: The Cardinality Error in the SRP

https://zenodo.org/records/20415656
1•humanfromearth9•56s ago•1 comments

When products think: navigating the AI product shift

https://www.cesarrg.com/when-products-think-navigating-the-ai-product-shift/
1•cesarrg•4m ago•0 comments

A useful paper on the case for AI data centres in space [pdf]

https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf
1•nilen•5m ago•0 comments

Prepare your "no" and keep it handy

https://sive.rs/n0
1•Michelangelo11•5m ago•0 comments

Robinhood Lets Customers Use AI to Trade Stocks, Make Credit-Card Purchases

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/robinhood-lets-customers-use-ai-to-trade-stocks-make-credit-card-purc...
1•cesarrg•7m ago•0 comments

Seven Ways to Avoid Losing Your Job to AI

https://www.thefp.com/p/tyler-cowen-seven-ways-to-avoid-losing
2•yarapavan•8m ago•2 comments

Why the US is moving troops from Germany to Poland: a US Army officer explains

https://vulpesetleo.substack.com/p/kosciuszko-smiles-for-our-freedom
2•hnjm•10m ago•0 comments

DiffusionBlocks: Training Neural Networks One Block at a Time

https://pub.sakana.ai/diffusionblocks/
2•hardmaru•10m ago•0 comments

Ax language: Compact source, build for agents

https://axlanguage.github.io/axlang/
2•mellosouls•11m ago•1 comments

Show HN: LaunchPact – get upvotes for your ProductHunt launch

https://www.launchpact.io
2•devtanna•11m ago•0 comments

Learnings from training a frontier font generation model

https://www.mixfont.com/blog/learnings-from-training-a-frontier-font-generation-model
1•justswim•14m ago•0 comments

Train 1T parameter LLM with 8 GPUs?

1•kendy1992•18m ago•0 comments

Energy Efficiency across Programming Languages [pdf]

https://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/paperSLE.pdf
1•doener•19m ago•2 comments

Google worker charged with using internal data to make $1.2M on Polymarket

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c052yv259jvo
1•ZeljkoS•21m ago•0 comments

Rcmd: Reimagined Command-Tab

https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd/
3•doener•23m ago•0 comments

After Ferrari EV backlash, Lamborghini says canceling EVs was the right choice

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/27/ferrari-luce-backlash-lamborghini-ceo-ev.html
1•kleiba2•26m ago•1 comments

Apify actors at $0.001/result (Google Maps, NPI, SEC EDGAR, more)

https://apify.com/meticulous_snail
1•meticuloussnail•27m ago•0 comments

A Love Letter to Neovim

https://caio.ca/blog/a-love-letter-to-neovim
1•birdculture•27m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI agents for UK GDAD PCF roles and their skills

1•jph•28m ago•0 comments

Digital Autonomy with RISC-V in Europe

https://dare-riscv.eu/
1•pimterry•32m ago•0 comments

The Future of Research Isn't Coming, It's Here

https://zenodo.org/records/20424253
1•anasteciadunu•33m ago•0 comments

Analyzing Table Space and Row Counts

https://medium.com/@joyshaw987/analyzing-table-space-and-row-counts-68a21a81013d
1•thunderbong•35m ago•0 comments

The first framework that can post train DeepSeek V4-pro on a single-node?

2•timxzz•38m ago•3 comments

Typst with Pandoc: A Modern, Fast Alternative to (Xe)LaTeX for PDF Generation

https://slhck.info/software/2025/10/25/typst-pdf-generation-xelatex-alternative.html
1•ankitg12•39m ago•0 comments

How to declare taxes in Germany as an App Developer

https://mertbulan.com/2026/05/28/how-to-declare-taxes-in-germany-as-an-app-developer/
2•mertbio•44m ago•1 comments

Repo Prompt's Next Chapter

https://repoprompt.com/blog/repo-prompt-next-chapter/
1•doppp•46m ago•0 comments

A joke about a Google Form became a private couples' intimacy tool

https://sexualsync.io/presentation#2
1•SVI•47m ago•0 comments

Canadian Nuclear FAQ

https://www.nuclearfaq.ca/
1•leonidasrup•47m ago•0 comments

Minutes journalist accuses CBS News of penalizing her

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/may/27/60-minutes-sharyn-alfonsi
1•pjmlp•48m ago•0 comments

Snooze: Run a Command at a Particular Time

https://github.com/leahneukirchen/snooze
1•thunderbong•49m ago•0 comments