Develop wordpress plugin to create pages with templates

Question

I'm a beginner wordpress plugin developer. Our plugin needs to create some specific pages in wordpress. My plugin can create the pages this way in the activation:

$page_id = wp_insert_post(
            array(
                'comment_status' => 'close',
                'ping_status'    => 'close',
                'post_author'    => 1,
                'post_title'     => ucwords('service network login'),
                'post_name'      => strtolower(str_replace(' ', '-', trim('service-network-login'))),
                'post_status'    => 'publish',
                'post_content'   => '',
                'post_type'      => 'page',
                )
            );

It's ok, I can find my page. After that I would like to add some php codes to this new page.

I know here can call a php function which generates some html content fo example this way:

'post_content'   => my_php_function()

But in this case if I change the content of the my_php_function(), then it doesn't affect page content if I refersh the page in browser.

I tried add template file to the page:

update_post_meta( $page_id, '_wp_page_template', 'template.php' );

But it doesn't work.

How can I create pages from plugin with dinamic content?

Thank you!

Answer 1

the pages are created in the activation, so if you want to update the content, i guess you need to deactivate / activate the plugin