question: public static ArrayList < String > jsonArrayStringToArrayList ( String jsonString ) { String modString = jsonString . replaceFirst ( "\\[" , "" ) ; modString = modString . replaceFirst ( "\\]" , "" ) ; modString = modString . replaceAll ( "\"" , "" ) ; String [ ] elements = modString . split ( "\\s*,\\s*" ) ; return new ArrayList < > ( Arrays . asList ( elements ) ) ; }
target:  Method to take an input json array format string and output an ArrayList