Can the new Chatter API Communities resource create a Visualforce Tabs community?

Question

In Summer '19, we got access to a new POST method on the connect/communities endpoint, allowing for programmatic creation of a Community:

Make a POST request to the existing /connect/communities resource with the new Community Input request body.

The resource is documented here and takes a JSON body:

{
   "name":"The Capricorn Cafe",
   "urlPathPrefix":"capricorncafe",
   "templateName":"Customer Service",
   "description":"Coffee and coffee products for the most discerning tastes."
}

I would like to use this endpoint to create a Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce community. However, making this call with "templateName": "Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce" yields

{'errorCode': 'INVALID_INPUT', 'message': 'The specified community template does not exist.'}]

If you make a request to the Community Templates endpoint, it does indeed include an entry called "Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce". However, using a GET to connect/communities to obtain information on existing Communities, Visualforce communities shows

    "templateName" : null,

None of the following options work:

• Percent-encoding the name.
• Omitting the templateName entirely.
• Passing null
• Passing the literal string "null"
• Passing an empty string

All yield the same error.

Is this possible? What input is the endpoint looking for?

Answer 1

I don't think this is documented, but I figured it out by looking at the outbound requests from the Communities wizard in Chrome Inspector.

The template name that the Connect API accepts for Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce is "VF Template". The Community creation process can be invoked by doing

POST /services/data/v46.0/connect/communities
{
    "name": "My Community",
    "description": "",
    "templateName": "VF Template",
    "urlPathPrefix": "my_community"
}