What is the best way to access the value of a ajax4jsf supported component that triggered an event, in it's actionListener handler method ? When I use other jsf components that supports the valueChangeListener property, the component value can be easily accessed using a call to event.getNewValue();

Excerpt of value change event handler code:

public void valueChangeListenerHandler(ValueChangeEvent event) throws Exception {
.......
String valueOfcomponentThatTriggeredEvent =
(String) event.getNewValue();
}


However, when I use an ajax4jsf component such as <a4j:support ..../>, I don't have access to event.getNewValue() since actionEvent does not support this call.

<h:inputText value="#{bean.field1}" id="field1" required="true">
<a4j:support event="onblur" immediate="true"
actionListener = "#{valueChangeListenerHandler.updateDepencies}"
reRender = "field1, field2"/>
</h:inputText>

I end up using code like below which gets the component value by providing the component ID to root.findComponent(ID) which is not a good practice.

Action event handler code excerpt:
public void updateDepencies(ActionEvent event) throws Exception {
FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
UIViewRoot root = context.getViewRoot();
HtmlInputText inputComp = (HtmlInputText) root.findComponent("form:subview:field1");
....
}

I look forward to finding a better way from your responses,
Thanks in advance for your help
Marcel