Building Lightweight PHP Microservices with webrium/core — No Framework Bloat Required

Do you really need a full framework to handle a few API endpoints or webhooks? Laravel and Symfony are excellent tools — for large applications. But when you're building a focused microservice, a webhook receiver, or a lightweight REST API, bootstrapping a full-stack framework means carrying hundreds of files, a massive autoloader, and a dependency tree you'll never fully use. That's the problem webrium/core was built to solve: a minimalist, zero-dependency PHP micro-framework written entirely from scratch, designed to stay out of your way. Installation composer require webrium/core That's it. No configuration files to publish, no service providers to register. The Entry Point Every webrium application starts with the same three lines: <?php require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php' ; use Webrium\App ; use Webrium\Route ; App :: initialize ( __DIR__ ); // ... your routes here App :: run (); App::initialize() sets the root path and loads the global helper functions. App::run() initializes error handling and dispatches the current request through the router. Routing The router supports all standard HTTP methods. Route handlers can be closures, a Controller@method string, or an [Controller::class, 'method'] array. Basic routes: Route :: get ( '/status' , fn () => [ 'status' => 'alive' ]); Route :: post ( '/items' , fn () => [ 'created' => true ]); Route :: put ( '/items/{id}' , fn ( $id ) => [ 'updated' => $id ]); Route :: patch ( '/items/{id}' , fn ( $id ) => [ 'patched' => $id ]); Route :: delete ( '/items/{id}' , fn ( $id ) => [ 'deleted' => $id ]); Route handlers return an array — the framework automatically encodes it as JSON and sends the correct Content-Type header. Dynamic parameters: Route :: get ( '/users/{id}/posts/{postId}' , function ( $id , $postId ) { return [ 'user_id' => $id , 'post_id' => $postId , ]; }); Named routes: Route :: get ( '/users/{id}' , fn ( $id ) => [ 'id' => $id ]) -> name ( 'users.show' ); // Generate the URL elsewhere: $url = rout