Automatic/Push Button site folder/vhost creation in Linux via CI/PHP

[eluser]Devon Lambert[/eluser]
I realize that what I propose here may seem a little far fetched, but please hear me out.

I am hoping that someone out there knows a way to create a One Push button scenario whereby a site is created from within a CI/PHP created backend, with appropriate info being sent to your Database, meanwhile, on the server side of things (assuming Apache), your folder structure is automatically put into place, and then the final, and most difficult for me, the appropriate vhost addition is made to your Servers host file.

I've been able to tackle the vast majority of this, all except the vhost addition. The whole scenario MUST be possible as Cpanel has the ability to do this for you, therefore I believe that there must be some script that is able to replicate Cpanel's capabilities.

The reason for this is that I am creating a multi - site dashboard that runs on CI. I would love to not have to leave this dashboard, drop to the command line to create a new addition to my Host file every time I want to add a new site in the backend.

So... any takers? :-)

** UPDATE **

Think I may have found what I'm looking for:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/vhosts/mass.html

May be useful to some one else as well.