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);
}

Take a look at this tutorial. Also you can parse above json like :

JSONArray arr = new JSONArray(yourJSONresponse);
List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
for(int i = 0; i < arr.length(); i++){
    list.add(arr.getJSONObject(i).getString("name"));
}

Use Gson library, which convert Java object to Json String

    String[] sentences=new String[3];
    sentences[0]="Hi";
    sentences[1]="Hello";
    sentences[2]="How r u?";

    Gson gson=new GsonBuilder().create();
    String jsonArray=gson.toJson(sentences);

    //["Hi","Hello","How r u?"]

    out.write(jsonArray);
    out.flush();
    out.close();

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.

To have a string value inside your JSON array, you must remember to backslash escape your double-quotes in your Java program. See the declaration of s below.

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]]";

Your code in the main() method works fine. Below is just a minor modification of your code in the main() method.

System.out.println("String to Json Array Stmt");
JsonParser parser = new JsonParser();
JsonElement tradeElement = parser.parse(s);
JsonArray trade = tradeElement.getAsJsonArray();
System.out.println(trade);

Lastly, remember to prefix your statement "com.google.gson.*" with the keyword "import", as shown below.

import com.google.gson.*;

Something like this:

ArrayList<String> jsonStringToArray(String jsonString) throws JSONException {

    ArrayList<String> stringArray = new ArrayList<String>();

    JSONArray jsonArray = new JSONArray(jsonString);

    for (int i = 0; i < jsonArray.length(); i++) {
        stringArray.add(jsonArray.getString(i));
    }

    return stringArray;
}

JSONParser parser = new JSONParser();
JSONArray array = (JSONArray)parser.parse("[{\"user_id\": 1}]");
System.out.println(((JSONObject)array.get(0)).get("user_id"));

You need to cast to a JSONArray as that is what the string contains.

If you're talking about using the JSON in java library, then since your input string is a JSON object, not a JSON array, you should first load it using JSONObject:

String response=getResponseFromServer();
JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject(response);

After that, you can use toJSONArray() to convert a JSONObject to JSONArray given an array of key strings:

String[] names = JSONObject.getNames(jsonObject);
JSONArray jsonArray = jsonObject.toJSONArray(new JSONArray(names));

There are actually two libraries containing the similar JSONArray class which makes it confusing somehow:

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.googlecode.json-simple/json-simple -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.googlecode.json-simple</groupId>
    <artifactId>json-simple</artifactId>
    <version>1.1.1</version>
</dependency>

and

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.json/json -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.json</groupId>
    <artifactId>json</artifactId>
    <version>20180813</version>
</dependency>

The org.json library has a JSONArray class which has a constructor accepting a String that can be parsed to a JSONArray. This is working when you have some simple form of Json array string like this:

["One", "two"]

So you can parse it simply like this to achieve the JSONArray:

import org.json.JSONArray;

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String val = "[\"One\", \"Two\"]";

        JSONArray jsonArr = new JSONArray(val);  
        for (int i = 0; i < jsonArr.length(); i++) {
            System.out.println( jsonArr.getString( i ) );
        }
    }
}

But this doesn't work simply for more complex Json strings similar to yours which is containing Json objects with multiple properties.

In this case you may find the other library more helpful. It has a JSONParser class that can parse complex Json objects within the strings:

import org.json.simple.JSONArray;
import org.json.simple.JSONObject;
import org.json.simple.parser.JSONParser;
import org.json.simple.parser.ParseException;

public class JSONArrayTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {
        String val = "[{\"name\":\"mobilenumber\",\"value\":\"9010000000\"},{\"name\":\"amount\",\"value\":\"200\"},{\"name\":\"ccffee\",\"value\":\"0\"},{\"name\":\"totalfee\",\"value\":\"200\"}]";

        JSONArray jsonArr = (JSONArray) new JSONParser().parse( val );

        for (int i = 0; i < jsonArr.size(); i++) {
            JSONObject jsonObj = (JSONObject) jsonArr.get( i );
            System.out.println( jsonObj );
        }
    }
}

Hope this would be helpful.