Trying to retrieve post meta

Question

I have created a meta box that allows users to add an additional name/id to their post. From what I can tell it is adding the meta information correctly because when I edit a post that has a custom name/ID it shows up in the input box by default as it should.

So my issue is that I am trying to pull the custom ID/name and use it as an additional ID tag in the code. Although it is not retrieving anything. When I use the code in my theme and check the html on the page the ID is showing ID="". So for some reason it is not pulling anything. Can anyone see an issue?

<?php $post_id = get_the_ID(); ?>
    <?php $value = get_post_meta($post_id, 'newtheme_section_id'); ?>
    <id="<?php $value; ?>">

If I change get_the_ID() to the_ID() then it returns a value but it is the post ID instead of the custom id the user entered into the feild.

EDIT: I was able to figure it out by echoing the function instead of storing it in a variable, along with Mannys suggestion . Here is the updated code.

<?php $post_id = get_the_ID(); ?>
<id="<?php echo esc_attr( get_post_meta($post_id, 'newtheme_section_id', true) ); ?>">

Answer 1

Make sure you include the third argument to get_post_meta, a Boolean that determines whether or not it returns a single item or an array of items. The default is false, which is an array, so set it to true:

  <?php $value = get_post_meta ($post_id, 'newtheme_section_id', true ); ?>