What would you want a 'minimally viable' microframework to include, in terms of functionality?
This has come up a couple of times in PHP framework and router threads, and i've been wondering what it would look like (it would probably be even smaller than Slim Framework). I've gotten as far as including Composer and a rather barebones router and telling people to just include whatever else they want but I suspect other people would want more.
I find it annoying when frameworks include dependencies I don't want, particularly an ORM or a templating engine, but I understand for a lot of people, that's the point (not having to pick dependencies themselves.)
Check whats your need, if you are building up much bigger apps go for a fully fledged framework, rest for small apps you can use microrouters , according to your need, each has its own unique features.
One of the benefits of using a url router is access control - you could have a problem with just letting every file be executable by url, especially if you happen to have a remote file inclusion issue anywhere. With a router you know explicitly what can get invoked and what can't.
Although, doing it without a router is probably always going to be faster.
A late trick I discovered, was that you can configure your php instance to inclued a file with every script. For example the following can be added to .htaccess:
php_value auto_prepend_file 'before.php'
You can then use that for bootstrapping, front controller and to limit access. Can be a bit clumsy, but it's nicely divorced from simple page controllers.
Note that is more than a router, it's a microframework.