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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo ago
yes they are a lot easier to work with when inserting into the database
snappr021•11mo 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•11mo ago
Looks like you made it in lovable. It has that characteristic UI.

If so, how much time did it take you?

Botlabs•11mo ago
thanks for your comment, it took me almost 3 weeks to build this
constantcrying•11mo 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?

Dilbert Principle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle
1•begueradj•1m ago•0 comments

Framework Laptop 13 Pro

https://frame.work/pt/en/laptop13pro
2•bpierre•2m ago•0 comments

Israeli operation "Generative AI for Good" creates AI "victims"

https://twitter.com/infolibnews/status/2046618147055173858
1•cramsession•2m ago•1 comments

Challenge over Met Police's use of live facial recognition lost

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq59x4vv954o
1•Cider9986•4m ago•0 comments

Why higher pay hasn't made young adults feel richer

https://www.ft.com/content/b61f60a3-d4d7-46d9-aa6f-dd78dffe71f5
1•paulpauper•6m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Paper Lantern – improving Autoresearch with research knowledge

https://www.paperlantern.ai/code
1•paperlantern•7m ago•0 comments

CrabTrap: An LLM-as-a-judge HTTP proxy to secure agents in production

https://twitter.com/pedroh96/status/2046604993982009825
2•yakkomajuri•8m ago•0 comments

Framework 13 Pro Announced

https://spooling.frame.work/?c=framework&e=nextgen2026&ver=javascript-4.4.4&cver=18&man=Productio...
4•dorjoy•8m ago•1 comments

A Year After Usa.i.d.'S Death, Fired Workers Find Few Jobs and Much Loss

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/us/politics/usaid-former-employees.html
1•paulpauper•9m ago•0 comments

Desmond Morris, 98, Dies; Zoologist Saw Links Between Humans and Apes

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/science/desmond-morris-dead.html
1•paulpauper•9m ago•0 comments

Claude Code has full shell access. Your CASB doesn't see it

https://www.getunbound.ai/blog/governing-claude-across-surfaces
1•awesbecher•9m ago•0 comments

What Is Freedom?

https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2026/04/20/what-is-freedom.html
1•JohnLocke4•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Uncompressed. Media stack with VPN namespace isolation, no public ports

https://github.com/Lackoftactics/uncompressed
1•lackoftactics•10m ago•0 comments

Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 Character Sheet

https://ja2.aufdemsofa.ch/
1•midzer•11m ago•0 comments

Two 10.0 severity Spinnaker vulns give attackers RCE and production access

https://zeropath.com/blog/spinnaker-rce-production-compromise
3•NonStopOyster•13m ago•1 comments

Cognitive self-test (reaction/memory/Stroop), AI coach, open dataset

https://mintypick.com/brain-scan
1•hichamabadou•14m ago•0 comments

I ran 100 lease agreements through AI and found the same hidden issues

https://goleazly.com/
1•pomberito•14m ago•0 comments

Agentic Market

https://agentic.market
1•petethomas•14m ago•0 comments

PosterChild – Founding Engineer $140K–$180K and 0.5%–1.0% equity

https://www.notion.so/Founding-Engineer-PosterChild-3040d1c8b98181e1b735e476b4798607
1•sivakumarc•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Zev helps you remember (or discover) CLI commands with natural language

https://github.com/dtnewman/zev-cli
1•dtnewman•14m ago•0 comments

Inverse design: A new pathway to custom functional polymers

https://phys.org/news/2026-03-inverse-pathway-custom-functional-polymers.html
1•PaulHoule•14m ago•0 comments

Guinea worm is about to be eradicated

https://twitter.com/anishmoonka/status/2045757539409621414
4•mhb•15m ago•0 comments

Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/
2•downbad_•18m ago•1 comments

How AI Is Replacing Us and Reinventing the Way We Work as a Software Consultancy

https://upsidelab.io/blog
1•vast-alive•18m ago•0 comments

Between Clay and Light: A Quranic Framework for the Age of Intelligence

https://aliasaria.ca/posts/between-clay-and-light/
1•aliasaria•19m ago•0 comments

New Study Finds That ADHD Has 9 Categories of Symptoms

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/brain-curiosities/202604/new-study-finds-that-adhd-has-9-...
1•ivewonyoung•22m ago•0 comments

Framework 13 Pro

https://frame.work
12•simonjgreen•23m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Can you listen to podcasts while working?

1•NourEddineX•25m ago•0 comments

Framework Laptop 13 Pro

https://frame.work/laptop13pro
26•Trollmann•25m ago•5 comments

Show HN: Muxforge Tmux Plugin Manager

https://muxforge.dev
1•techalchemist•27m ago•0 comments