[wp-hackers] get_post_meta in widgets

[Ash Goodman]

Hi, I have been chasing my tail on this for a couple of days.

I don't seem to be able to access get_post_meta from within a widget and am
hoping someone can point me in the right direction?

I am building a  widget to run ads in the sidebar. The ads are pages with
meta values that assign them as ads and I use the the_post_thumbnail for the
ad image and custom write panels to store the ads url as a meta value. I
have checked and the data is being stored correctly in the database.

Within the widget I am running a new WP-Query:

$rightAdsection = new
WP_Query('post_type=page&posts_per_page=1&meta_value=_adsPositionRight&orderby=rand');


    while($rightAdsection->have_posts()) :
    $rightAdsection->the_post();
    $adRight = get_post_meta($post->ID, '_adright', true);
    if ($adRight) {
    echo "it works";
    }else{
    echo "it doesn't work";
    };
    endwhile;

No matter what I always get "it doesn't work"

The WP_Query is running correctly, the loop is there and if I set
post_per_page to a higher number it echo's "it doesn't work" a matching
number of times.

If I substitute the whole if statement with

echo $post_ID;

I get nothing so it seems as if the query doesn't get the post id?

But it does get

the_post_thumbnail('ads-image-right');

In fact if I replace the "it doesn't work" in the if statement with
the_post_thumbnail('ads-image-right'); It displays the correct image. Which
is to say that the $adRight variable is empty though it shouldn't be but the
the_post_thumbnail still works

If I replace $adRight = get_post_meta($post->ID, '_adright', true); with
$adRight = get_post_meta($id, '_adright', true);

It makes no difference

I am relatively new to PHP and am sure I am missing something terribly
obvious.

Thanks!

Ash