Why is button value not changing?

Question

I have a fairly complex form with several input text fields and buttons that have their values changed during operation.
The components are created from a session bean and are updated by two different mechanisms.
The input text fields are updated by user input.
The button acts as a toggle. When the user pushed the button, a javascript function checks the value of the button.
The button contains a single character, either a "X" or "O".
When the button is pushed, the javascript checks the value and changes it to the other.
Visually, this all works fine. Both the text fields and buttons behave as expected.
Here is the problem.
When the user pushes the "Apply" button, a session bean looks for the text fields and buttons using 'findComponent' for a specified ID.
They attempt to fetch the values of the components and update an internal array of values.
The input text component works fine.
User changes value, it is identified correctly, and the new value is detected on the component.
The commandButton component does not work as expected.
Visually, the component value changes properly.
When I use findComponent() and getValue(),. I get the original value.
I have verified that the component ID is correct - I print it with an Alert() method in the javascript and check it with the debugger before the findComponent() method.
But, what is returned from getValue() of the found component is the original value, not the value that is visually displayed on the form.
Can anyone explain why this happens and what I can do to get the correct visually displayed value from the button component?
Thanks.

Answer 1

<h:inputHidden value="#{myBean.myProp}" />Although this is annoying on the client side because the client id is rendered as the name.
Alternatively:
<input type="hidden" name="myProp" value="#{myBean.myProp}" />along with the following bean config:
    <managed-bean>
       <managed-bean-name>myBean</managed-bean-name>
       <managed-bean-class>MyBeanClass</managed-bean-class>
       <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
       <managed-property>
            <property-name>myProp</property-name>
            <property-class>java.lang.String</property-class>
            <value>#{param.myProp}</value>
       </managed-property>
    </managed-bean>