how to return as array in php function

Question

im using laravel 5.4 and intervention plugin to upload images as ajax

i will upload images in php controller and it will return a response (file name).

and the returned variables from php is an array but in javascript it going to string and i cant iterate that

 public function upload(Request $request)
{
    $array = $request->file('image');
    $count = count($array);

    for ($i=0 ; $i<$count; $i++)
    {
        $img = Image::make($request->file('image')[$i]);
        $img->widen(800);
        $img->fit(800,600);
        $rnd = rand(10,10000);
        $location = 'images/carimages/c'.$rnd.'.jpg';
        $img->save($location);
        $answer[] = $rnd;
    }
    return $answer;
}

Answer 1

public function upload(Request $request) {
    $answer=array();
    $array = $request->file('image');
    $count = count($array);
    $answer=array();
    for ($i=0 ; $i<$count; $i++)
    {
        $img = Image::make($request->file('image')[$i]);
        $img->widen(800);
        $img->fit(800,600);
        $rnd = rand(10,10000);
        $location = 'images/carimages/c'.$rnd.'.jpg';
        $img->save($location);
        $answer[$i] = $rnd;
    }
//here print $answer and check 
//you can also check $answer with function var_dump(); 
    echo json_encode($answer);
    die;
}

Decode this array like

json_decode($json_array,true);