Vaadin 8 and DateField component

DateField component behaves not as expected.

The Value of the component, defined in api is public T getValue().
Method  public String getParseErrorMessage() returns defaultParseErrorMessage, when the component is empty or user entered invalid text.
Because of a TYPE SAFETY, i cannot decide whether the component`s getValue() is empty or user entered invalid string.

Method protected Result<T> handleUnparsableDateString(String dateString) doesn`t really help, because i want to validate datefield, when user clicks on a button, instead of loosing datefield`s focus, so i have set the errorHandler for component to null.

Can you implement something like isEnteredTextEmpty ?
I`ve also tried isEmpty, but with no luck (returns true, when the text is still there).

Thanks.

As a workaround, colleague had an idea to get String data from DateField component via Java reflection.
For people, facing the same problem:

public static String getStringDataFromDateField(DateField dateField) throws Exception {
        Field field = null;
        field = dateField.getClass().getSuperclass().getSuperclass().getDeclaredField("dateString");
        field.setAccessible(true);
        String dateString = (String) field.get(dateField);
        field.setAccessible(false);
        return dateString;
    }