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?

Qwen 3.8 27B is excellent, but it defaults to overthinking things

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/16/qwen-38-27b/
134•bilsbie•3h ago•56 comments

The Life and Death of Direct File [pdf]

https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/vinton_report_5.pdf
108•ronbenton•3h ago•38 comments

AGI-64 Brings Sierra Adventures to the Commodore 64

https://meanhamster.com/news/agi-64-brings-sierra-adventures-to-the-commodore-64
19•erickhill•1h ago•2 comments

A 3rd World Embedded Engineer Responds to "RISC-V They Should Have Known Better"

https://rvembedded.com/blog_post/12/
401•Narishma•10h ago•221 comments

Rhombus 1.1 is now available

https://blog.racket-lang.org/2026/08/rhombus-v1.1.html
28•spdegabrielle•2h ago•12 comments

Claude: System Prompts

https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/release-notes/system-prompts
572•tosh•14h ago•237 comments

Reticulum – Decentralized Mesh Network

https://reticulum.network/
34•sudo_cowsay•3h ago•8 comments

Low-Tech Ceramic Water Filter

https://wiki.lowtechlab.org/wiki/Filtre_%C3%A0_eau_c%C3%A9ramique/en
119•Bluestein•5d ago•31 comments

Interview with Amit Patel, Creator of "Solar Realms Elite"

https://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/02/18/amit-patel-creator-of-solar-realms-elite/
22•bananaboy•1w ago•2 comments

SIMD in the 90s: Programming Intel's Pentium MMX

https://pikuma.com/blog/programming-intel-pentium-mmx-simd
79•ibobev•3d ago•39 comments

Protobuf has LSP support. You're welcome

https://buf.build/blog/protobuf-lsp
128•theanonymousone•8h ago•84 comments

Dancing with friends and enemies: boids' swarm intelligence

https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/122095
25•surprisetalk•5d ago•1 comments

The AI Credit Resale Economy

https://vectoral.com/blog/who-are-the-token-brokers
243•mlenhard•12h ago•93 comments

MathCode, Mathematical Coding Agent

https://math-ai-org.github.io/mathcode/
73•homarp•9h ago•24 comments

The federal keyword lists that canceled billions in research funding

https://www.highereddive.com/news/inside-the-federal-keyword-lists-that-canceled-billions-in-rese...
138•walrus01•3h ago•37 comments

Applying a photosynthetic process to treat "dry eye"

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/taking-tip-plants-eyes
5•gumby•3h ago•0 comments

Clamiga: Common Lisp for the Amiga

https://nnamgreb.de/blog/Clamiga+-+Common+Lisp+for+the+Amiga
94•emptybits•4d ago•10 comments

Nvidia dramatically reduces amount of OpenAI infra financing it may guarantee

https://www.reuters.com/business/nvidia-scales-back-250-billion-openai-data-center-guarantee-wsj-...
139•root-parent•6h ago•51 comments

Prolly: A content-addressed ordered map built on prolly trees

https://github.com/crabbuild/prolly
5•forhappy•2h ago•0 comments

Plastic mechanical computer from 1963: The Digi-Comp 1 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y8bGBE71yw
54•tobr•1d ago•16 comments

Anton Chekhov played at love most of his life

https://commonreader.wustl.edu/winning-and-losing-at-the-great-game-of-intimacy/
70•lermontov•2d ago•15 comments

Stripe Clinches over $7B Deal to Buy AI Firm OpenRouter

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-16/stripe-nears-deal-to-buy-ai-firm-openrouter-fo...
232•zacharyozer•7h ago•162 comments

Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-ads-firefox-ios
564•pentagrama•14h ago•237 comments

The Marvelously Inventive Life of Mária Telkes (2023)

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/sun-queen-marvelously-inventive-life-maria-t...
3•mooreds•3d ago•0 comments

Red queen hypothesis – a new way forward for self-improving AI

https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/red-queen-hypothesis-new-way-forward-self-improving-ai
20•hardlianotion•7h ago•2 comments

A quick look at zero-knowledge proofs

https://bernsteinbear.com/blog/zkp/
56•evakhoury•2d ago•28 comments

Tell HN: Cloudflare silently injects its analytics when you switch nameservers

322•stagas•9h ago•84 comments

Models Are Getting Dumber on Purpose

https://w4g1.dev/blog/models-are-getting-dumber-on-purpose
285•hruvhwe•8h ago•162 comments

A True Telnet BBS on a Casio Calculator

https://ei3lh.eu/2026/08/16/a-true-telnet-bbs-on-a-casio-calculator/
91•austinallegro•15h ago•9 comments

The FastLanes Unified Transport Layout

https://blog.dave.tf/post/fastlanes-utl/
3•raggi•5d ago•0 comments