Show HN: Convert Large CSV/XLSX to JSON or XML in Browser

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?

.self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

Qwen 3.6 27B is the sweet spot for local development

Free the Icons

Scientists find molecular-level evidence for two structures in liquid water

Rocketlab acquires Iridium

Ornith-1.0: self-improving open-source models for agentic coding

A native graphical shell for SSH

US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

Kb – Prolog Knowledge Base

South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

Wallace the 6 inch f/2.8 telescope, building it, and hiking with it

WATaBoy: JIT-Ing Game Boy Instructions to WASM Beats a Native Interpreter

Apple Neural Engine: Architecture, Programming, and Performance

JumpServer: Open-Source Privileged Access Management

30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

Working With AI: A concrete example

SQLite improving performance with pre-sort

What happens when you run a CUDA kernel?

One million passports leaked online

Micro-Agent: Beat Frontier Models with Collaboration Inside Model API

Dark Sky Lighting

Ornith-1.0: Self-scaffolding LLMs for agentic coding

What can you confidently guarantee about your software?

European ISPs Want Rightsholders Held Accountable for Overblocking Damage

Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

Font-Family Recommendations

Is sunscreen the new margarine? (2019)

Rebuilding the Computer Room

Venetian Bridge Brawls in 17th and 18th Century Art

Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

.self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

Qwen 3.6 27B is the sweet spot for local development

Free the Icons

Scientists find molecular-level evidence for two structures in liquid water

Rocketlab acquires Iridium

Ornith-1.0: self-improving open-source models for agentic coding

A native graphical shell for SSH

US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

Kb – Prolog Knowledge Base

South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

Wallace the 6 inch f/2.8 telescope, building it, and hiking with it

WATaBoy: JIT-Ing Game Boy Instructions to WASM Beats a Native Interpreter

Apple Neural Engine: Architecture, Programming, and Performance

JumpServer: Open-Source Privileged Access Management

30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

Working With AI: A concrete example

SQLite improving performance with pre-sort

What happens when you run a CUDA kernel?

One million passports leaked online

Micro-Agent: Beat Frontier Models with Collaboration Inside Model API

Dark Sky Lighting

Ornith-1.0: Self-scaffolding LLMs for agentic coding

What can you confidently guarantee about your software?

European ISPs Want Rightsholders Held Accountable for Overblocking Damage

Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

Font-Family Recommendations

Is sunscreen the new margarine? (2019)

Rebuilding the Computer Room

Venetian Bridge Brawls in 17th and 18th Century Art

Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

Show HN: Convert Large CSV/XLSX to JSON or XML in Browser

Comments