
Show HN: CSVshare – Instantly share data with anyone and make it searchable - jasoncrawford
https://csvshare.com/
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v512
Cool project, I had a same issue like author mentioned with sharing csv files
in Google sheets so recently I made a utility to convert csv files to HTML
table -
[https://github.com/vividvilla/csvtotable](https://github.com/vividvilla/csvtotable)
it works offline also and generates single HTML file which can be shared or
hosted anywhere. Here is a demo of HTML file generated -
[https://cdn.rawgit.com/vividvilla/csvtotable/2.1.0/sample/go...](https://cdn.rawgit.com/vividvilla/csvtotable/2.1.0/sample/goog.html)

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marklit
I just tried out the service. Some feedback:

1\. It would be nice if I could upload CSVs that are gzip compressed.

2\. When I download the CSVs it would be good if the filenames included gz at
the end as of now they're written out as a series of random characters
followed by a .csv extension.

3\. Time columns have been transformed after I downloaded the file I just
uploaded. The date is in US format and the time information is lost.
2010-12-01 13:51:00 became 12/1/10.

4\. When trying to view a 50K row CSV on your site Chrome slows to a crawl.

5\. I originally tried to upload a 1-million-row x 9 column, 33 MB, gzip
compressed CSV. It would be good if the service limits could allow for
something like this.

This service should do one better than just sending a CSV via email and having
the other party opening it up in Excel.

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fiatjaf
The idea is great. The internet needs a simple and useful tool like that.

However, it fails when I try to browse a .txt file (which is CSV, believe me)
based just on its extension. Also, it is way too slow. I've opened the longest
rivers example the site has offered me and couldn't even search, scrolling was
difficult.

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shinryuu
I wonder why I would use this when I can use google spreadsheets?

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jasoncrawford
* Faster & easier to upload

* Anyone can search/query like a database

* Data can be downloaded in CSV or JSON format, manually or via API

Hope that helps!

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zitterbewegung
I can download a google spreadsheet to CSV also. I agree that you are faster
to setup to upload a csv

For some reason you can't upload directly on a google sheets website but you
can do the following workflow:

1\. Open google drive and drag it to there

2\. Open the file on google drive and select spreadsheets.

I like your faceted queries and the JSON format might be appealing. Also
Google sheets has an API.
[https://developers.google.com/sheets/api/](https://developers.google.com/sheets/api/)

Is my information that I upload public to anyone or private?

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jasoncrawford
Yeah, I've always found it clunky and awkward to upload CSVs to Google Sheets.

Re public: see my response to @jordache, it is either public or “unlisted”,
but in either case it is available to anyone who has the link.

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ludicast
Very nice Jason.

I know I'm always bugging you about Fieldbook APIs (this is Nate K again), but
is there an api for creation here?

I have a super-duper-cool use case in mind but it involves POSTing an in-
memory CSV rather than manually clicking (but I don't want to clutter my
fieldbook namespace).

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jasoncrawford
Doesn't exist yet but definitely something we're thinking about, mind sharing
the use case? Can ping me privately (jason@fieldbook)

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shkkmo
I wonder if they've thought about the CSV injection attacks that were posted
to HN recently...

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jasoncrawford
Yes, we have. Those attacks don't apply to viewing data on CSVshare, which
doesn't have the vulnerabilities of Excel or Google Sheets. However, be
careful about opening CSVs in Excel or Google from CSVshare or any other
source, unless you trust the person who uploaded them.

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zubairq
Very nice. I made a system to search CSV files at
[http://gosharedata.com](http://gosharedata.com) but I it is only available as
a download and not online, so I like CSVShare, very cool!

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jonbaer
Is there anyway you could put exported file size or total number of rows on
the detail page (for those interested in analyzing medium-large sets).

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jasoncrawford
Good idea, for now one quick thing you can do is enter this in the search bar:

count()

And that will tell you how many rows there are.

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jordache
I assume this is meant for use of none sensitive data? What do you do with the
uploaded files?

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thegandhi
A business model that might work for enterprises (assuming they find the tool
useful)

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siddharthdeswal
Why do you think it would work for enterprises?

