WordPress Loop in a Widget

When I was writing a WordPress widget plugin to display information from a sub set of my posts (that’s it on the side, with the paper toys…) I noticed that the WordPress Loop doesn’t quite behave itself when widgetized in the 2.8+ style.

When using the following code, inside a widget, to return posts from a custom query, you’ll find that the post title and perma-link are returned, but the post ID is not.

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<?php $loop = new WP_Query($query);
while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post(); ?>
	<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>">
        <?php echo $post->ID.' : @; the_title(); ?></a>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Adding a global call to the $post variable at the top of the loop fixes this issue.

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<?php $loop = new WP_Query($query);
while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post();
	global $post;?>
	<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>">
        <?php echo $post->ID.' : @; the_title(); ?></a>
<?php endwhile; ?>