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?

Veracrypt Project Update

https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/discussion/general/thread/9620d7a4b3/
266•super256•3h ago•65 comments

The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code

https://piechowski.io/post/git-commands-before-reading-code/
69•grepsedawk•1h ago•6 comments

Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw4W9V57SKs&t=5716s
173•tetrisgm•4h ago•70 comments

Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era

https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing
1302•Ryan5453•16h ago•646 comments

Show HN: We built a camera only robot vacuum for less than 300$ (Well almost)

https://indraneelpatil.github.io/blog/2026/robot-vacuum/
31•indraneelpatil•2d ago•2 comments

Lunar Flyby

https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/lunar-flyby/
727•kipi•19h ago•180 comments

Protect your shed

https://dylanbutler.dev/blog/protect-your-shed/
167•baely•7h ago•47 comments

System Card: Claude Mythos Preview [pdf]

https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/53566bf5440a10affd749724787c8913a2ae0841.pdf
707•be7a•16h ago•505 comments

Slightly safer vibecoding by adopting old hacker habits

http://addxorrol.blogspot.com/2026/03/slightly-safer-vibecoding-by-adopting.html
113•transpute•5d ago•61 comments

GLM-5.1: Towards Long-Horizon Tasks

https://z.ai/blog/glm-5.1
537•zixuanlimit•17h ago•221 comments

Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

https://www.skoda-storyboard.com/en/skoda-world/skoda-duobell-a-bicycle-bell-that-outsmarts-even-...
110•ra•1h ago•128 comments

Native Americans had dice 12k years ago

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/native-americans-dice-games-probability-study-rcna26...
65•delichon•4d ago•27 comments

Your File System Is Already A Graph Database

https://rumproarious.com/2026/04/04/your-file-system-is-already-a-graph-database/
5•alxndr•2d ago•1 comments

How to get better at guitar

https://www.jakeworth.com/posts/how-to-get-better-at-guitar/
343•jwworth•2d ago•168 comments

Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rx7xzd10xo
390•speckx•17h ago•89 comments

S3 Files

https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2026/04/s3-files-and-the-changing-face-of-s3.html
305•werner•14h ago•91 comments

A truck driver spent 20 years making a scale model of every building in NYC

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-truck-drive-spent-20-years-making-this-astonishing-sc...
332•1659447091•2d ago•54 comments

Show HN: An interactive map of Tolkien's Middle-earth

https://middle-earth-interactive-map.web.app/
208•frasermarlow•13h ago•40 comments

Binary obfuscation used in AAA Games

https://blog.farzon.org/2026/04/binary-obfuscation-that-doesnt-kill-lto.html
98•noztol•2d ago•38 comments

Hobby CNC machining and resin casting (2015)

https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/gcnc/
14•achierius•3d ago•3 comments

A database of analog cameras that can be 3D printed

https://printed.analogcamera.space/
105•thomasjb•5d ago•15 comments

The Clock

https://blog.senko.net/the-clock
74•senko•4d ago•27 comments

US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/07/trump-iran-war-ceasefire
490•g-b-r•11h ago•1428 comments

Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

https://blog.cloudflare.com/post-quantum-roadmap/
334•ilreb•20h ago•100 comments

Xilem – An experimental Rust native UI framework

https://github.com/linebender/xilem
100•Levitating•10h ago•33 comments

JSIR: A High-Level IR for JavaScript

https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-jsir-a-high-level-ir-for-javascript/90456
59•nnx•9h ago•14 comments

Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

https://printervention.app/details
199•gmac•17h ago•85 comments

Show HN: Gemma 4 Multimodal Fine-Tuner for Apple Silicon

https://github.com/mattmireles/gemma-tuner-multimodal
179•MediaSquirrel•14h ago•24 comments

A whole boss fight in 256 bytes

https://hellmood.111mb.de//A_whole_boss_fight_in_256_bytes.html
112•HellMood•2d ago•41 comments

Running out of disk space in production

https://alt-romes.github.io/posts/2026-04-01-running-out-of-disk-space-on-launch.html
206•romes•4d ago•112 comments