State should flow in one direction, from the top layer down to the bottom. So reaching into a child element to get its state is a bad idea. To accomplish the serialization with this structure, you simply need to reach into the DOM to get the value of the input. In the code example above, the serialize
method should be:
serialize: function() {
return { name: this.props.name, value: this.refs.field.getDOMNode().value };
},