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?

A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones

https://research.google/blog/a-low-carbon-computing-platform-from-your-retired-phones/
47•vikas-sharma•2h ago•16 comments

Leaving Mozilla

https://blog.unitedheroes.net/5751
283•martey•6h ago•162 comments

Electric motors with no rare earths

https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/magazine/energy-and-powertrains/all-about-electric-motors-with-no...
527•bestouff•14h ago•151 comments

The state of building user interfaces in Rust

https://areweguiyet.com/#ecosystem
23•mahirsaid•2d ago•9 comments

Statement on US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5

https://www.anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access
2541•Dylan1312•11h ago•1831 comments

Show HN: 2 Weeks of Hallucinate – The Photo Gallery

https://hallucinate.site/gallery
5•stagas•10m ago•1 comments

CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers

https://innovativegenomics.org/news/crispr-technique-selectively-shreds-cancer-cells/
858•gmays•21h ago•191 comments

Show HN: Paca – Lightweight Jira alternative for human-AI collaboration

https://github.com/Paca-AI/paca
36•pikann22•2h ago•17 comments

Open source AI must win

https://opensourceaimustwin.com/?share=v2
1099•vednig•10h ago•345 comments

There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

https://12gramsofcarbon.com/p/tech-things-there-is-a-massive-shadow
320•theahura•7h ago•279 comments

How to setup a local coding agent on macOS

https://ikyle.me/blog/2026/how-to-setup-a-local-coding-agent-on-macos
395•kkm•18h ago•99 comments

Show HN: Putt.day a daily mini golf game

https://putt.day/
205•ellg•13h ago•86 comments

The computer science degree isn’t dead

https://spectrum.ieee.org/computer-science-degree-isnt-dead
111•jnord•3d ago•102 comments

Malware developers added nuclear and biological weapons text to to their spyware

https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/2064661778978533571
410•marc__1•1d ago•224 comments

Twenty One Zero-Days in FFmpeg

https://depthfirst.com/research/21-zero-days-in-ffmpeg
233•redbell•14h ago•148 comments

Swift at Apple: Migrating the TrueType hinting interpreter

https://www.swift.org/blog/migrating-truetype-hinting-to-swift/
209•DASD•16h ago•95 comments

Israeli firm BlackCore suspected of meddling in New York and Scotland votes

https://www.reuters.com/world/israeli-firm-blackcore-also-suspected-meddling-nyc-scotland-votes-f...
235•pera•4h ago•117 comments

Shepherd's Dog: A Game by the Most Dangerous AI Model

https://koenvangilst.nl/lab/claude-fable-shepherds-dog
103•vnglst•6h ago•92 comments

Launch HN: BitBoard (YC P25) – Analytics Workspace for Agents

https://bitboard.work/
46•arcb•19h ago•21 comments

H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/congress-just-rushed-through-disastrous-copyright-office-ov...
229•Cider9986•2d ago•81 comments

Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

https://piwodlaiwo.github.io/pirates/
281•iweczek•19h ago•82 comments

Show HN: Lightweight Task queue on Erlang/OTP, SQLite-backed, no overengineering

https://github.com/entGriff/ezra
47•ent1c3d•2d ago•8 comments

Arch Linux Now Believes Malware Incident Under Control: More Than 1,500 Packages

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Arch-Linux-AUR-More-Than-1500
15•qwertox•26m ago•0 comments

Automating Myself Out of Development

https://www.thoughtfultechnologist.com/p/automating-myself-out-of-development
38•nisabek•3d ago•21 comments

Tectonic: A modernized, complete, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine

https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/en-US/
63•maxloh•3d ago•30 comments

On CPU Physics and CPU Cycles

https://6it.dev/blog/on-cpu-physics-and-cpu-cycles-80730
51•signa11•7h ago•7 comments

Slightly reducing the sloppiness of AI generated front end

https://envs.net/~volpe/blog/posts/reduce-slop.html
199•FergusArgyll•21h ago•122 comments

The Future of wasi-gfx and wasi:webgpu

https://wasi-gfx.dev/blog/posts/future-of-wasi-gfx/
28•mendyberger•3d ago•8 comments

The Alchemist of Flesh: The Man Who Turned Humans into Stone(2025)

https://medium.com/@Arcaarcana/the-extraordinary-story-of-girolamo-segato-03d8dae30758
12•ofalkaed•2d ago•2 comments

Fudgetown, USA (2024)

https://tastecooking.com/fudgetown-usa/
7•NaOH•1d ago•0 comments