How to display author meta in a sidebar widget

Question

I am trying to display author meta data (username, email) in a custom sidebar widget and I cannot figure it out.

I can display the info on a template page (using php) just fine but that wont work for what I need. I have also figured out how to call the meta data by manually specifying the user id.

I have tried using the same code that works on the template page in my widget code but it wont work (I am not using the WP widget section).

How can I display the meta data (username and email) in the sidebar widget? Is there a way to pull the user id of a post with php? Or is there a better/different way to pull the user meta by php? I am guessing the widget doesn't have access to the same post information that the normal page does?

Answer 1

I figured it out, completely accidentally. I had already tried the solutions posted but they did not work for me, most likely due to the theme I am using (TravelTour).

For me, to get the user meta to display I had to call wp_reset_query before it. I have no idea why.

Example:

wp_reset_query();
// then
echo get_the_author_meta('user_email');