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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo ago
yes they are a lot easier to work with when inserting into the database
snappr021•10mo 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•10mo ago
Looks like you made it in lovable. It has that characteristic UI.

If so, how much time did it take you?

Botlabs•10mo ago
thanks for your comment, it took me almost 3 weeks to build this
constantcrying•10mo 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?

Show HN: I Built Glassdoor but for Food Delivery Drivers in Dubai

https://igotfilmed.com/
1•shraddha92•18s ago•0 comments

Vivo Time: stop wasting time, start living it

https://www.vivotime.net/
1•lopespm•1m ago•0 comments

Nokian Tyres launches studded winter tire that adapts to changes in temperature

https://company.nokiantyres.com/news-and-media/news-article/a-new-era-of-winter-driving-begins-no...
1•komape•2m ago•0 comments

The Technical Differences Between the MacBook Neo and MacBook Air

https://512pixels.net/2026/03/the-differences-between-the-macbook-neo-and-macbook-air/
1•tosh•2m ago•0 comments

AI in Warfare Is Here

https://www.wionews.com/world/ai-in-warfare-is-here-pentagon-used-anthropic-s-claude-ai-in-iran-s...
1•hmontazeri•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: GridSnap–Open-source encrypted grid-based note manager (Tauri and Rust)

https://github.com/akinalpfdn/GridSnap
1•akinalpfdn•10m ago•1 comments

Databasus: Databases backup tool (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB)

https://github.com/databasus/databasus
1•thunderbong•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: TypeCrt – Zero-latency typing test in vanilla TS, no frameworks

https://typecrt.pages.dev/
1•shadowline•10m ago•0 comments

2025 Plan for National Economic and Social Development

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1isxLR34Ltzs3jkgS2ZbSNeDM7Jdf2aTs/view
1•hunglee2•10m ago•0 comments

Refusal in LLMs is mediated by a single direction

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jGuXSZgv6qfdhMCuJ/refusal-in-llms-is-mediated-by-a-single-direction
2•rzk•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: PyMath Preview – preview LaTeX math in Python docstrings inside VS Code

https://github.com/sankarebarri/pymath-preview
1•sankarebarri•11m ago•1 comments

Goke – simple, type safe, elegant command line framework

https://github.com/remorses/goke
1•xmorse•11m ago•0 comments

No Silver Bullet [pdf]

https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~cs50/Reading/NoSilverBullet.pdf
3•abrbhat•12m ago•0 comments

AdaCore Supply Chain Security Evolution

https://www.adacore.com/blog/adacore-software-supply-chain-security-evolution
1•nikokrock•14m ago•0 comments

ISON Format

https://ison.dev/
2•blef•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Compile all your competitor research in one place

https://intel.comsync.in/
2•StupidoMaximo•19m ago•1 comments

LLM Epistemics

https://mccormick.cx/news/entries/llm-epistemics
2•chr15m•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Built a Cursor for Product Managers

https://www.brainstom.in/
1•ameyakhot•21m ago•1 comments

International Law of Self-Determination

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination
2•sanbor•21m ago•0 comments

We don't need continual learning for AGI. What top labs are currently doing

3•kok14•22m ago•0 comments

Show HN: DeskShifter – Name, colour-code and switch macOS desktops

1•ViDesk•23m ago•0 comments

Using Rust and Postgres for everything: patterns learned over the years

https://kerkour.com/rust-postgres-everything
1•enz•23m ago•0 comments

Midjourney in Korea (Alemwjsl)

https://www.alemwjsl.com/
1•alemwjsl•24m ago•0 comments

Grammarly Is Offering 'Expert' AI Reviews from Top Authors – Dead or Alive

https://www.wired.com/story/grammarly-is-offering-expert-ai-reviews-from-your-favorite-authors-de...
1•jmsflknr•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Terminal dashboard for managing Cursor cloud agents

https://github.com/ofershap/agents-control-tower
1•ofershapira•26m ago•1 comments

Inline Stopwords, Exceptions, and Wordforms

https://manticoresearch.com/blog/inline-tokenization-dictionary-configuration/
1•snikolaev•26m ago•0 comments

Essence – free focused log viewer for Mac

https://github.com/robert-v/Essence-public
1•rob3rth•28m ago•0 comments

I want to learn building editing

1•MAYAKINE•29m ago•0 comments

Show HN: OneManBSD – A self-containing OpenBSD build with all source in the ISO

https://bialamusic.com/onemanBSD/
1•bialamusic•30m ago•1 comments

Iran's 'Missile Cities' Have Become One of Its Biggest Vulnerabilities

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-underground-missiles-59b3492c
2•petethomas•31m ago•0 comments