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•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?

Teenage Engineering: Introducing APC-2

https://teenage.engineering/products/apc-2
81•vthommeret•1h ago•41 comments

DeepSeek V4 Pro beats GPT-5.5 Pro on precision

https://runtimewire.com/article/deepseek-v4-pro-beats-gpt-5-5-pro-on-precision
49•yogthos•59m ago•4 comments

The Smallest Brain You Can Build: A Perceptron in Python

https://ranpara.net/posts/perceptron-explained-from-scratch/
60•DevarshRanpara•2h ago•8 comments

Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

https://gavinray97.github.io/blog/building-from-zero-after-addiction-prison-felony
436•gavinray•8h ago•195 comments

New drug 'functionally cures' many hepatitis B virus infections

https://www.science.org/content/article/new-drug-functionally-cures-many-hepatitis-b-virus-infect...
12•gmays•57m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

https://www.absurdlyoptimized.com/recipes/pancakes/
134•bkazez•2d ago•41 comments

A Matter Wi-Fi Light Bulb in Rust on the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W

https://github.com/melastmohican/rust-rpico2-embassy-examples
42•melastmohican•2h ago•3 comments

Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)

https://nik.art/making-peace-with-your-unlived-dreams/
159•herbertl•8h ago•78 comments

Algorithmic Monocultures in Hiring

https://algorithmichiring.github.io/
7•drchiu•43m ago•0 comments

How's Linear so fast? A technical breakdown

https://performance.dev/how-is-linear-so-fast-a-technical-breakdown
310•howToTestFE•7h ago•159 comments

7.8 magnitude earthquake shakes part of southern Philippines. Tsunami possible

https://www.yahoo.com/news/weather-news/articles/as--philippines-earthquake-001322726.html
35•mikhael•1h ago•6 comments

What is the purpose of the lost+found folder in Linux and Unix? (2014)

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/18154/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-lostfound-folder-in-lin...
144•tosh•2d ago•51 comments

Do we fear the serializable isolation level more than we fear subtle bugs (2024)

https://blog.ydb.tech/do-we-fear-the-serializable-isolation-level-more-than-we-fear-subtle-bugs-5...
57•b-man•4d ago•31 comments

Powering up a module from the IBM 604: an electronic calculator from 1948

https://www.righto.com/2026/06/ibm-604-thyraton-tube-module.html
79•elpocko•9h ago•24 comments

Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-grid-flags-risks-data-centers-crypto-sites-fail-vol...
10•1vuio0pswjnm7•33m ago•0 comments

The 29th International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC) 2025 Winners

https://www.ioccc.org/2025/
368•matt_d•20h ago•88 comments

Show HN: Lathe – Use LLMs to learn a new domain, not skip past it

https://github.com/devenjarvis/lathe
249•devenjarvis•15h ago•48 comments

LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

https://human-in-the-loop.bearblog.dev/llms-are-eroding-my-software-engineering-career-and-i-dont...
822•poisonfountain•13h ago•809 comments

My automated doubt development process

https://www.alexself.dev/blog/automated-doubt
60•aself101•8h ago•17 comments

Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-Vulkan-Video-Merged
76•Bender•3h ago•11 comments

Cloning a Sennheiser BA2015 battery pack

https://blog.brixit.nl/cloning-a-sennheiser-ba2015-accu-pack/
112•zdw•1d ago•17 comments

Proliferate (YC S25) is hiring to building open source Codex

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/proliferate/jobs/L3copvK-founding-engineer
1•pablo24602•9h ago

KNN early termination in Manticore Search

https://manticoresearch.com/blog/knn-early-termination/
7•snikolaev•4d ago•0 comments

Back end is full of hidden workflows

https://unmeshed.io/blog/your-backend-is-full-of-hidden-workflows
4•jusonchan81•4d ago•0 comments

Splash Is a Colour Format

https://www.todepond.com/lab/splash/
53•tobr•4d ago•66 comments

Office-open-xml-viewer: Office XML document viewer that renders to HTML Canvas

https://github.com/yukiyokotani/office-open-xml-viewer
120•maxloh•9h ago•48 comments

A visual introduction to kernel functions

https://kelvinpaschal.com/blog/kernel-functions/
36•Kelvinidan•2d ago•9 comments

Backrest – a web UI and orchestrator for restic backup

https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest
86•flexagoon•5d ago•7 comments

Podman 6: machine usability improvements (2025)

https://blog.podman.io/2025/10/podman-6-machine-usability-improvements/
101•daesorin•12h ago•6 comments

An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/headlines/an-ohio-valley-100000-watt-fm-signal-is-se...
155•pkaeding•1d ago•149 comments