Swift Convert A String-As-An-Array, To An Array Of Strings - arrays

Question

I have a string:
"["word1","word2"]"
And I want a simple way to convert it to an actual [String].
All the other questions I could dig up on there were about converting int strings to arrays.
I tried doing
Array(arrayLiteral: "["word1","word2"]")
But I get
["[\"word1\",\"word2\"]"]
Manually cleaning up the edges and removing the slashes seems like I'm doing something very wrong.
I'm curious if there's a simple way to convert a an array of strings as a string into an array of strings.
i.e. Convert "["word1","word2"]" to ["word1","word2"]
Solution (Thanks to #Eric D)
let data = stringArrayString.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)
var stringsArray:[String]!
do
{
stringsArray = try NSJSONSerialization.JSONObjectWithData(data!, options: []) as? [String]
} catch
{
print()
}
print("Array is \(stringsArray)")

Answer 1

Encode your "string array" to data, then decode this data as JSON to a Swift Array.
Like this, for example:
let source = "[\"word1\",\"word2\"]"
guard let data = source.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding),
arrayOfStrings = try NSJSONSerialization.JSONObjectWithData(data, options: []) as? [String] else {
fatalError()
}
print(arrayOfStrings) // ["word1", "word2"]
print(arrayOfStrings[1]) // "word2"

Answer 2

Agree with comments above, I'd probably use a JSON parser. Failing that (or if you can't for some reason), I do not know of any built-in way; you'd have to do it manually. I'd do something like:
extension String {
func stringByTrimmingFirstAndLast() -> String {
let startIndex = self.startIndex.successor()
let endIndex = self.endIndex.predecessor()
return self.substringWithRange( startIndex..<endIndex )
}
}
let str = "[\"word1\",\"word2\"]"
let array = str
.stringByTrimmingFirstAndLast()
.componentsSeparatedByString(",")
.map { string in
return string.stringByTrimmingFirstAndLast()
}