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?

Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

https://www.reuters.com/technology/norway-imposes-near-ban-ai-elementary-school-2026-06-19/
233•ilreb•7h ago•155 comments

There are no instances in ATProto

https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/
296•danabramov•7h ago•173 comments

I used sound waves to make espresso. It could cut coffee‑brewing energy use by ¾

https://theconversation.com/i-used-sound-waves-to-make-espresso-it-could-cut-coffee-brewing-energ...
150•zeristor•6d ago•91 comments

Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

https://startupfortune.com/hyundai-takes-full-control-of-boston-dynamics-as-softbank-exits-for-32...
569•ck2•6h ago•270 comments

Bobby Prince, composer for Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Duke Nukem 3D, has died

https://www.legacy.com/legacy/robert-bobby-prince-lll
56•pgrote•3h ago•4 comments

Think of the Children: How to Force Real ID for All Internet Traffic (2023)

https://nochan.net/b/Internet-Crap/20230829-Think-Of-The-Children/
21•Bender•2h ago•0 comments

Surprising Economics of Load-Balanced Systems

https://brooker.co.za/blog/2020/08/06/erlang.html
14•KraftyOne•2h ago•2 comments

Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/19/spacex-retirement-savings-elon-musk
12•ValentineC•24m ago•0 comments

How many of the 170k English words do you know?

https://vocabowl-870366514258.us-west1.run.app/
197•abnry•9h ago•306 comments

Project Valhalla, Explained: How a Decade of Work Arrives in JDK 28

https://www.jvm-weekly.com/p/project-valhalla-explained-how-a
524•philonoist•16h ago•323 comments

Ask HN: Will programmers write more efficient code during the memory shortage?

9•amichail•18m ago•13 comments

Egyptian Fractions

https://blog.plover.com/math/egyptian-fractions.html
38•luu•3d ago•0 comments

Google workspace threatening to block Firefox access

https://tales.fromprod.com/2026/169/google-workspace-threatening-to-block-firefox.html
379•birdculture•6h ago•127 comments

A 1976 university experiment spun up the U.S. wind industry

https://spectrum.ieee.org/william-heronemus-wind-energy
56•pseudolus•4d ago•5 comments

Telescope Ranchers

https://kottke.org/26/06/telescope-ranchers
92•bookofjoe•3d ago•32 comments

Zenzizenzizenzic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenzizenzizenzic
28•gyosifov•1h ago•13 comments

DuckDB Internals Part 1

https://www.greybeam.ai/blog/duckdb-internals-part-1
423•marklit•3d ago•128 comments

A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/new-bill-takes-aim-government-pressure-silence-lawful-onlin...
207•hn_acker•5h ago•114 comments

Court Records Should Be Free

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/court-records-should-be-free
164•hn_acker•5h ago•28 comments

Show HN: Metiq: a real time 3D globe for 100 public datasets

https://metiq.space
74•rakeda•3d ago•19 comments

RhinoCollab a plugin for real-time editing for Rhino 3D

https://rhinocollab.com
6•Ashxius•5d ago•1 comments

Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

https://blog.jxmo.io/p/zen-and-the-art-of-machine-learning
228•jxmorris12•3d ago•73 comments

Amateur may have cracked Linear A

https://aiclambake.com/clamtakes/linear-a/
390•Kosturdistan•7h ago•152 comments

To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system

https://news.mit.edu/2026/to-study-how-chips-really-work-mit-researchers-built-their-own-operatin...
345•speckx•4d ago•52 comments

Ten years of ClickHouse in open source

https://clickhouse.com/blog/open-source-10
261•saisrirampur•4d ago•71 comments

Big Banana Car

https://bigbananacar.com/
106•Bender•4h ago•61 comments

Show HN: Continuous Nvidia CUDA PC Sampling Profiler

https://www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2026/06/10/nvidia-cuda-pc-sampling
12•gnurizen•4d ago•3 comments

Gribouille 0.3.0: A Grammar of Graphics for Typst

https://mickael.canouil.fr/posts/2026-06-15-gribouille-0-3/
202•mcanouil•4d ago•76 comments

Amazon drops Sam Altman movie after announcing OpenAI partnership

https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/films/news/sam-altman-biopic-amazon-openai-dea...
149•theanonymousone•3h ago•60 comments

The AirPods Effect

https://www.theescapenewsletter.com/p/the-airpods-effect
367•herbertl•1d ago•650 comments