how To split a longtext filed in laravel

in mysql DB a longtext field containing text like ["xxxx","yyy","Zzz"] how to split this to string array? $string contains the long text filed.

    $split1= explode('","',$string);
    $split2=str_replace('["','',$split1);
    $split3=str_replace('"]','',$split2);

but this not works.

via Chebli Mohamed