// servlet is local to the app
String requestURL = request.getRequestURL().toString();
String servletPath = request.getServletPath();
String serverPath = requestURL.substring(0,requestURL.indexOf(servletPath));
URL url = new URL(serverPath + "/getScores");

URLConnection conn = url.openConnection();
conn.setConnectTimeout(12000);
InputStream is = conn.getInputStream();

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
IOUtils.copy(is, writer, "UTF-8");

String jsonStr = writer.toString();

Gson gson = new Gson();
Type listType = new TypeToken<List<ScoreRecord>>() {}.getType();
List<ScoreRecord> scores = gson.fromJson(jsonStr, listType);