How can I init a text field in a UIAlertView

The updated UIAlertView now has a style which allows a Text input field in UIAlertView i.e.

alert.alertViewStyle = UIAlertViewStylePlainTextInput;

This works well but I wanted to init the input text with a defualt text like "sample".

I see that folks in the past have used undocumented api like (which works great)

[alert addTextFieldWithValue:@"sample text" label:@"Text Field"];

but since this is still not an official Apple public API I can't use it.

Any other way to handle this? I did try to init in willPresentAlertView but text field seem to be read-only.

Thanks