Show HN: String.is – an open-source, privacy-friendly online string toolkit

by recurseron 4/14/2022, 10:48 PMwith 5 comments

by recurseron 4/14/2022, 10:48 PM

I'm wary of using closed-source online string formatters and converters, so I've been working on https://string.is/ as a safe, open-source alternative. I had a couple of goals when building it:

1. It should be open-source.

2. It should not set any cookies.

3. It should have a strict Content Security Policy.

4. It should be opinionated about dependancies, and only use well-known, well-supported libraries.

5. It should try to detect the format of the input, and intelligently choose output options.

The last point in particular I feel is an improvement on most existing services - paste in some text and it will try to auto-detect the format and convert it accordingly (although admittedly detection of some formats is a bit primitive currently).

It's built with TypeScript + Next.js. In addition to the hosted version, the GitHub README has one-click install buttons for Vercel and Heroku, plus Docker images.

Source: https://github.com/recurser/string-is

Demo: https://string.is/ (click 'load an example' to get a random converter)

More info: https://string.is/about

There are a couple of other tools in this space if you're interested in alternatives:

  - https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/ (online)
  - https://devutils.app/ by HN member trungdq88 (MacOS)
  - https://devtoys.app/ by HN member veler (Windows)
  - https://boop.okat.best/ (MacOS)

by catchmeifyoucanon 4/15/2022, 5:45 AM

This looks great. Better than the top google search results I use for this.

Would be awesome if there was a string diff mode