For anyone else who might need this:

String jsonString = "[\"string1\",\"string2\",\"string3\"]";
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
List<String> strings = mapper.readValue(jsonString, List.class);

JSONArray att = new JSONArray(YourList);

To convert ArrayList to Json, just download Open Source json utility from: http://json.org/java/ or Jar file from here

And just do:

JSONArray jsonAraay = new JSONArray(your_array_list);

That's it

Note: You should have setter/getter in your POJO/MODEL class to convert arraylist to json

Use GSON library for that. Here is the sample code

List<String> foo = new ArrayList<String>();
foo.add("A");
foo.add("B");
foo.add("C");

String json = new Gson().toJson(foo );

Here is the maven dependency for Gson

<dependencies>
    <!--  Gson: Java to Json conversion -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.google.code.gson</groupId>
        <artifactId>gson</artifactId>
        <version>2.2.2</version>
        <scope>compile</scope>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Or you can directly download jar from here and put it in your class path

http://code.google.com/p/google-gson/downloads/detail?name=gson-1.0.jar&can=4&q=

To send Json to client you can use spring or in simple servlet add this code

response.getWriter().write(json);

Here you get JSONObject so change this line:

JSONArray jsonArray = new JSONArray(readlocationFeed); 

with following:

JSONObject jsnobject = new JSONObject(readlocationFeed);

and after

JSONArray jsonArray = jsnobject.getJSONArray("locations");
for (int i = 0; i < jsonArray.length(); i++) {
    JSONObject explrObject = jsonArray.getJSONObject(i);
}

Add below dependency to your code

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.fasterxml.jackson.core/jackson-core -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>
    <version>2.8.5</version>
</dependency>

And add your lists in map and then convert it to JSON String.

Map<String, List<String>> map=new HashMap<>();
map.put("First Grade", list1);
map.put("Second Grade", list2);
map.put("Third Grade", list3);
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
try {
    String json = mapper.writeValueAsString(map);
    System.out.println(json);
} catch (JsonProcessingException e) {
    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
    e.printStackTrace();
}

If you want or need to work with a Java array then you can always use the java.util.Arrays utility classes' static asList() method to convert your array to a List.

Something along those lines should work.

String mStringArray[] = { "String1", "String2" };

JSONArray mJSONArray = new JSONArray(Arrays.asList(mStringArray));

Beware that code is written offhand so consider it pseudo-code.