Showing related posts (custom post type) outside of the loop

Question

I'm trying the following (it's a sidebar widget in the Single New template):

  <ul class="featured-jobs">
  <?php
    $postid = $post->ID;
    $categories = get_the_category($post->ID);
  ?>
  <h2><?php echo $postid; ?></h2>
  <h2><?php echo $categories; ?></h2>
  <?php // Create and run custom loop
    $args=array(
      'post_type' => 'news',
      'category__in' => $categories,
      'post__not_in' => $postid,
      'posts_per_page'=> 3 // Number of related posts that will be shown.
    );
    $custom_posts = new WP_Query();
    $custom_posts->query( $args );
    while ($custom_posts->have_posts()) : $custom_posts->the_post();
  ?>
    <li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
  <?php endwhile; ?>
  <?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>
  <li class="see-all-positions"><a href="http://www.pixelmatic.com/open-jobs/">See All Positions >></a></li>
  </ul>

But as it turns out, $postid comes up blank and $categories outputs as Array.

What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

Try using $wp_query global variable:

global $wp_query;
$postid = $wp_query->post->ID;

Answer 2

$_post = get_queried_object();
$post_id = $_post->ID;

It's somehow like that how single_post_title() gets the title.