Grabbing a form component's input before the form has been submitted

[Michael Mehrle]

I have a form that contains a date textfield. When a user fills out the
date and then launches a modal via another link I need to somehow pass
that field's input to the modal's panel. Problem is that the form at
that point has not been submitted yet. I already tried:

 

Date startDate = (Date)startTimeField.getConvertedInput();

 

However, it's always null. How can I do this?

 

Thanks in advance...

 

Michael