Get the post Author ID outside the WP Loop

Question

What I'm trying to accomplish is the code will auto detect the Author ID <?php the_author_ID(); ?> of the blogpost. Once it has the author ID, it will do a simple task. If the author # is equal to 2, call function sBadong. Else, if author ID is equal to 3, call function sJade. if two condition was not met, call function sBen.

here's my code, but it's not working. I dunno what wrong's with it. can you help?

<?php
$author_id=$post->post_author;
if ($author_id == "2") {
    echo sBadong();
} elseif ($author_id == "3") {
    echo sJade();
} else {
    echo sBen();
}
?>

The problem with the code above is it's not reading the Author Number of the post. It always returning the function sBen(); and ignore all if and else statements.

Solution

Please use function as following:

$author_id = get_post_field ('post_author', $post_id);

It will work.