You are right! Even @Sean Patrick Floyd's answer is too much boilterplate to covert a JSON array to string[] or any other type of array class. Rather here is what I find to be elegant:

JsonArray jsonArray = input.getAsJsonArray("key");

Gson gson = new Gson();
String[] output = gson.fromJson(jsonArray , String[].class)

NOTE 1: JsonArray must be an array of strings, for the above example, without any property names. Eg:

{key:["Apple","Orange","Mango","Papaya","Guava"]}

Note 2: JsonObject class used above is from com.google.gson library and not the JSONObject class from org.json library.

Seems like you should make a new JsonPrimitive("value1") and add that. See The javadoc

Gson gson = new Gson();
Wrapper[] arr = gson.fromJson(str, Wrapper[].class);

class Wrapper{
    int number;
    String title;       
}

Seems to work fine. But there is an extra , Comma in your string.

[
    { 
        "number" : "3",
        "title" : "hello_world"
    },
    { 
        "number" : "2",
        "title" : "hello_world"
    }
]

I don't see the problem. This code runs fine for me:

import com.google.gson.JsonArray;
import com.google.gson.JsonElement;
import com.google.gson.JsonParser;


public class GsonExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String s= "[[\"110917\", 3.0099999999999998, -0.72999999999999998," +
                "2.8500000000000001, 2.96, 685.0, 38603.0], [\"110917\", 2.71," +
                "0.20999999999999999, 2.8199999999999998, 2.8999999999999999," +
                "2987.0, 33762.0]]";


        JsonParser  parser = new JsonParser();
        JsonElement elem   = parser.parse( s );

        JsonArray elemArr = elem.getAsJsonArray();
        System.out.println( elemArr );
    }
}

The only problem maybe is that you failed to properly escape the double quotes in your s string literal.

array is JsonArray object from com.google.gson library

for (int i=0; i<array.size(); i++) {
    JsonObject json = array.get(i).getAsJsonObject();
    String value = json.get("key").getAsString();
}

Take a look at Gson docs

Gson gson = new Gson();
int[] ints = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
String[] strings = {"abc", "def", "ghi"};

(Serialization)
gson.toJson(ints);     ==> prints [1,2,3,4,5]
gson.toJson(strings);  ==> prints ["abc", "def", "ghi"]

(Deserialization)
int[] ints2 = gson.fromJson("[1,2,3,4,5]", int[].class); 
==> ints2 will be same as ints

Tis is important for you: We also support multi-dimensional arrays, with arbitrarily complex element types

For null objects, Gson by default will not convert as null. Ref. But you can configure to scan those nulls attributes if you want to do it after.

The default behaviour that is implemented in Gson is that null object fields are ignored. This allows for a more compact output format; however, the client must define a default value for these fields as the JSON format is converted back into its Java.

Here's how you would configure a Gson instance to output null:

Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().serializeNulls().create();

In your problem maybe you don't need to configure that.

I hope it helps.

Using curly-braces is not a "style", it is how JSON denotes an object. square brackets represent a list, and curly-braces are used to represent an object, which in Javascript behaves like a map. Putting curly braces around the list entries is nonsensical because within the object you need name-value pairs (just like a map).

Below code is using com.google.gson.JsonArray. I have printed the number of element in list as well as the elements in List

import java.util.ArrayList;

import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.JsonArray;
import com.google.gson.JsonObject;
import com.google.gson.JsonParser;


public class Test {

    static String str = "{ "+ 
            "\"client\":\"127.0.0.1\"," + 
            "\"servers\":[" + 
            "    \"8.8.8.8\"," + 
            "    \"8.8.4.4\"," + 
            "    \"156.154.70.1\"," + 
            "    \"156.154.71.1\" " + 
            "    ]" + 
            "}";

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        try {

            JsonParser jsonParser = new JsonParser();
            JsonObject jo = (JsonObject)jsonParser.parse(str);
            JsonArray jsonArr = jo.getAsJsonArray("servers");
            //jsonArr.
            Gson googleJson = new Gson();
            ArrayList jsonObjList = googleJson.fromJson(jsonArr, ArrayList.class);
            System.out.println("List size is : "+jsonObjList.size());
                    System.out.println("List Elements are  : "+jsonObjList.toString());


        } catch (Exception e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

}

OUTPUT

List size is : 4

List Elements are  : [8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4, 156.154.70.1, 156.154.71.1]

I was looking for a way to parse object arrays in a more generic way; here is my contribution:

CollectionDeserializer.java:

import java.lang.reflect.ParameterizedType;
import java.lang.reflect.Type;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.Iterator;

import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.JsonArray;
import com.google.gson.JsonDeserializationContext;
import com.google.gson.JsonDeserializer;
import com.google.gson.JsonElement;
import com.google.gson.JsonParseException;

public class CollectionDeserializer implements JsonDeserializer<Collection<?>> {

    @Override
    public Collection<?> deserialize(JsonElement json, Type typeOfT,
            JsonDeserializationContext context) throws JsonParseException {
        Type realType = ((ParameterizedType)typeOfT).getActualTypeArguments()[0];

        return parseAsArrayList(json, realType);
    }

    /**
     * @param serializedData
     * @param type
     * @return
     */
    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    public <T> ArrayList<T> parseAsArrayList(JsonElement json, T type) {
        ArrayList<T> newArray = new ArrayList<T>();
        Gson gson = new Gson();

        JsonArray array= json.getAsJsonArray();
        Iterator<JsonElement> iterator = array.iterator();

        while(iterator.hasNext()){
            JsonElement json2 = (JsonElement)iterator.next();
            T object = (T) gson.fromJson(json2, (Class<?>)type);
            newArray.add(object);
        }

        return newArray;
    }

}

JSONParsingTest.java:

public class JSONParsingTest {

    List<World> worlds;

    @Test
    public void grantThatDeserializerWorksAndParseObjectArrays(){

        String worldAsString = "{\"worlds\": [" +
            "{\"name\":\"name1\",\"id\":1}," +
            "{\"name\":\"name2\",\"id\":2}," +
            "{\"name\":\"name3\",\"id\":3}" +
        "]}";

        GsonBuilder builder = new GsonBuilder();
        builder.registerTypeAdapter(Collection.class, new CollectionDeserializer());
        Gson gson = builder.create();
        Object decoded = gson.fromJson((String)worldAsString, JSONParsingTest.class);

        assertNotNull(decoded);
        assertTrue(JSONParsingTest.class.isInstance(decoded));

        JSONParsingTest decodedObject = (JSONParsingTest)decoded;
        assertEquals(3, decodedObject.worlds.size());
        assertEquals((Long)2L, decodedObject.worlds.get(1).getId());
    }
}

World.java:

public class World {
    private String name;
    private Long id;

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(Long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

}