How to use form values from an unbound form

If you add this method to your form class:

def get_cleaned_or_initial(self, fieldname):
        if hasattr(self, 'cleaned_data'):
            return self.cleaned_data.get(fieldname)
        else:
            return self[fieldname].field.initial

you could then re-write your code as:

if request.method == 'GET':
    form = MyForm()
else:
    form = MyForm(request.method.POST)
    form.is_valid()

do_query(form.get_cleaned_or_initial('start_date'), form.get_cleaned_or_initial('end_date'))

Unbound means there is no data associated with form (either initial or provided later), so the validation may fail. As mentioned in other answers (and in your own conclusion), you have to provide initial values and check for both bound data and initial values.

The use case for forms is form processing and validation, so you must have some data to validate before you accessing cleaned_data.