I set a bean from the controller and used the bean attribute of aui tags. It worked.<aui:input bean="${questionnare}" ...
. This works fine for me and if bean has value, it gets prepopulated.
class YourModel{
String someValue;
}
In the controller we add to the rendermapping method the parameter @ModelAttribute("yourModel") YourModel yourModel
and in the liferay jsp page, just add
<aui:input type="text" name="someValue"... bean="${yourModel}"/>
this will populate the value if it is present.