frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

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?

Helium balloon lifts up two tons of building material over Tibet's mountains

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-humiliated-as-un-speech-bombs-with-bored-audience/
1•ksec•9m ago•1 comments

Big Banks Say They're Uneasy About People Shopping via AI Agents

https://gizmodo.com/big-banks-say-theyre-uneasy-about-people-shopping-via-ai-agents-2000815443
1•thm•10m ago•1 comments

LGBT tolerance slumps in the Netherlands as debate turns vicious

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/09/lgbt-tolerance-slumps-in-the-netherlands-as-debate-turns-vicious/
3•latexr•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Kern.md – Single-session long-running agent

https://github.com/oguzbilgic/kern-ai/blob/master/templates/KERN.md
1•obilgic•20m ago•0 comments

Anthropic classifiers prohibit kernel development

https://twitter.com/TheAhmadOsman/status/2102535871727857915/photo/1
4•nullbio•21m ago•1 comments

United Nations: AI Agents, Misalignment and the Risk of Losing Human Control [pdf]

https://www.un.org/independent-international-scientific-panel-ai/sites/default/files/2026-09/Them...
1•nsagent•22m ago•0 comments

Grammarly will send unhinged messages to all your users if you try to cancel

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1wjdpgx/psa_grammarly_will_send_unhinged_messages_to_all/
2•ksec•22m ago•1 comments

Acer CEO says memory makers are hyping 2030 shortage fears to protect margins

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/acer-ceo-says-memory-makers-are-hyping-2030-short...
3•alok-g•23m ago•1 comments

North Texas engineer built a map for cheap local restaurants [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6qhp0SsEcM
2•phodo•24m ago•1 comments

Data-Only Attacks Are Easier Than You Think

https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/data-only-attacks-are-easier-you-think
4•segfaultbuserr•34m ago•0 comments

A Machine Beat Me at Chess. I'm Still Rooting for AI

https://www.thenextmove.org/p/a-machine-beat-me-at-chess-im-still
1•akbarnama•37m ago•0 comments

Loment: A self-hosted systems language with multi-syntax front ends

https://github.com/FujoJTOP/loment
1•FujoLoment•38m ago•1 comments

Porting Bhyve to Rust

https://github.com/TritonDataCenter/rshyve
2•nwilkens•43m ago•1 comments

Snorkel AI triples valuation to $3.5B as demand for AI training data booms

https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/22/snorkel-ai-triples-valuation-to-3-5b-as-demand-for-ai-training-...
2•nlpnerd•45m ago•2 comments

Anatomy of a (Postgres) Search Engine

https://planetscale.com/blog/anatomy-of-a-postgres-search-engine
1•ksec•49m ago•0 comments

Specs cut defects in AI-generated code from 148 to 23 across five models

https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.23270
1•sandeepdhuri•50m ago•0 comments

President Lula Dataset

https://huggingface.co/datasets/geoffchan/lula-footage/viewer/default/train
1•rodrigueslotu•51m ago•0 comments

RGPU – Use a remote Nvidia GPU from PyTorch on a machine that has none

https://rgpu.dev
1•boxstream•56m ago•0 comments

Americans Are About to Lose Access to Prescriptions from Canada

https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/us-customs-prescription-drugs-canada-71978a47
5•baran•57m ago•0 comments

Critical Period in Brain Development

https://www.simplypsychology.org/critical-period.html
4•kamaraju•57m ago•0 comments

HarmBlock+ Safest Smartphone: Please Rotate Responsibly

https://paul.reviews/harmblock-worlds-safest-smartphone-please-rotate-responsibly/
1•pseudohadamard•58m ago•0 comments

Sadness and Suicidal Behavior Among Teenagers Is Declining, CDC Finds

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/science/teen-sadness-depression.html
2•lxm•1h ago•0 comments

Agent-browser equivalent for desktop and mobile apps

https://agent-device.dev
1•novoreorx•1h ago•0 comments

Emergent Collusion in Long-Horizon LLM Agent Interaction

https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.24967
1•sbulaev•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: SubRead: line up an audiobook with its eBook, in the browser

https://subread.space
1•equwal•1h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is anyone charging extra their customers for credit card payments?

1•thomasjeff1•1h ago•2 comments

Show HN: Sbm: plain-text bookmarks synced across terminal, browser, Android

https://sbmsync.com
2•equwal•1h ago•0 comments

Transit rewards (Waymo pays you to take the train)

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/09/transit-rewards/
24•raybb•1h ago•7 comments

AgeKey – Privacy First Age Verification

https://agekey.org/how-age-signals-work
1•pickledish•1h ago•0 comments

How to Create Your Own Personal AI Benchmark

https://every.to/also-true-for-humans/how-to-create-your-own-personal-ai-benchmark
2•Garbage•1h ago•0 comments