How to set quicksearch initial value?

where I want tu put an initial value. I have seen that quicksearch has 'q' element but I can't access it, for example this does not find the q element:

$quickSearch->getElement('q');

How can I access the quicksearch in order to set an initial value?

Looking at the source of it can help you find things out. Agile Toolkit is designed in a way where developer should take advantage of the knowledge of the source code.

QuickSearch is derived from Filter which is derived from Form, so there should be addField somewhere. Looking at the QuickSearch, you'll find it inside recallAll() function. There are no calls to this functions so we should look into the parent class - Filter.

Filter sets up a hook in api to call recallAll after initialization have been finished. That means to be able to access the field you can either redefine a method or add a hook yourself.

Hook:

$this->api->addHook('post-init',function() use($quickSearch){
    $quickSearch->getElement('q')->set('hello');
});

Extending

class MyQuicksearch extends QuickSearch {
    function recallAll(){
        parent::recallAll();
        $this->getElement('q')->set('hello');
    }
}

Finally you can take advantage of knowing where recallAll is loading their default values from and simply do this:

$quicksearch->memorize('q','hello');