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•12mo 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•12mo 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•12mo 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•12mo 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•12mo 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•12mo 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•12mo 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•12mo 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•12mo 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•12mo ago
yes they are a lot easier to work with when inserting into the database
snappr021•12mo 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•12mo ago
Looks like you made it in lovable. It has that characteristic UI.

If so, how much time did it take you?

Botlabs•12mo ago
thanks for your comment, it took me almost 3 weeks to build this
constantcrying•12mo 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?

Soft launch of open-source code platform for government

https://www.nldigitalgovernment.nl/news/soft-launch-for-government-open-source-code-platform/
58•e12e•1h ago•28 comments

Ghostty is leaving GitHub

https://mitchellh.com/writing/ghostty-leaving-github
2654•WadeGrimridge•14h ago•779 comments

Show HN: Rip.so – a graveyard for dead internet things

https://rip.so
33•bozdemir•1h ago•22 comments

Bugs Rust won't catch

https://corrode.dev/blog/bugs-rust-wont-catch/
315•lwhsiao•8h ago•138 comments

HardenedBSD Is Now Officially on Radicle

https://hardenedbsd.org/article/shawn-webb/2026-04-26/hardenedbsd-officially-radicle
72•lftherios•4h ago•10 comments

Tell HN: An update from the new Tindie team

38•altairprime•2h ago•22 comments

How ChatGPT serves ads

https://www.buchodi.com/how-chatgpt-serves-ads-heres-the-full-attribution-loop/
353•lmbbuchodi•10h ago•238 comments

Before GitHub

https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/4/28/before-github/
482•mlex•13h ago•150 comments

Show HN: Rocky – Rust SQL engine with branches, replay, column lineage

https://github.com/rocky-data/rocky
61•hugocorreia90•20h ago•4 comments

Why Law Is Law-Shaped

https://lawvm.org/why-law-is-law-shaped/
21•ekns•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: Auto-Architecture: Karpathy's Loop, pointed at a CPU

https://github.com/FeSens/auto-arch-tournament/blob/main/docs/auto-arch-tournament-blog-post.md
165•fesens•17h ago•34 comments

Withnail's Coat and I

https://ontherow.substack.com/p/withnails-coat-and-i
84•apollinaire•1d ago•5 comments

Low-Compilation-Cost Register Allocation in LLVM-Based Binary Translation

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3767295.3803591
30•matt_d•3h ago•0 comments

OpenAI models coming to Amazon Bedrock: Interview with OpenAI and AWS CEOs

https://stratechery.com/2026/an-interview-with-openai-ceo-sam-altman-and-aws-ceo-matt-garman-abou...
276•translocator•15h ago•89 comments

I won a championship that doesn't exist

https://ron.stoner.com/How_I_Won_a_Championship_That_Doesnt_Exist/
176•SEJeff•14h ago•90 comments

GitHub RCE Vulnerability: CVE-2026-3854 Breakdown

https://www.wiz.io/blog/github-rce-vulnerability-cve-2026-3854
366•bo0tzz•18h ago•76 comments

Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

https://legallayer.substack.com/p/who-owns-the-claude-code-wrote
414•senaevren•23h ago•384 comments

Gallium oxide electronics withstand extreme cold

https://discovery.kaust.edu.sa/en/article/26858/gallium-oxide-electronics-withstand-extreme-cold/
47•giuliomagnifico•1d ago•1 comments

We still don't have a more precise value for "Big G"

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/we-still-dont-have-a-more-precise-value-for-big-g/
71•rbanffy•1d ago•45 comments

Talkie: a 13B vintage language model from 1930

https://talkie-lm.com/introducing-talkie
711•jekude•1d ago•290 comments

Intel Arc Pro B70 Review

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/intel-arc-pro-b70-review/
171•zdw•5d ago•104 comments

Behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity rewires the brain after an experience

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-type-of-neuroplasticity-rewires-the-brain-after-a-single-exp...
121•ibobev•1d ago•4 comments

Your phone is about to stop being yours

https://keepandroidopen.org/en/
1398•doener•19h ago•633 comments

Warp is now open-source

https://www.warp.dev/blog/warp-is-now-open-source
281•meetpateltech•18h ago•75 comments

Regression: malware reminder on every read still causes subagent refusals

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/49363
219•thomashobohm•10h ago•114 comments

Apple CMF (Color-Matching Functions) 2026

https://www.lttlabs.com/articles/2026/04/11/apple-studio-display-xdr-display-testing-results
69•HeyMeco•10h ago•2 comments

Show HN: Drive any macOS app in the background without stealing the cursor

https://github.com/trycua/cua
135•frabonacci•18h ago•32 comments

Localsend: An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop

https://github.com/localsend/localsend
856•bilsbie•22h ago•253 comments

When the Internet Was a Place

https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2025/09/when-the-internet-was-a-place/
60•herbertl•9h ago•20 comments

UAE to leave OPEC

https://www.ft.com/content/8c354f2d-3e66-47f1-aad4-9b4aa30e386d
435•bazzmt•21h ago•561 comments