After a taste of what Laravel can offer you, you most likely do not want to hear about minimalist microframeworks. Still, we think it is good to know more than one framework. You can get to know different approaches, be more versatile, and everyone will want you in their team.

We chose Silex because it is a microframework, which is very different from Laravel, and also because it is part of the Symfony family. With this introduction to Silex, you will learn how to use your second framework, which is of a totally different type, and you will be one step closer to knowing Symfony as well, which is one of the big players.

What is the benefit of microframeworks? Well, they provide the very basics—that is, a router, a simple dependency injector, request helpers, and so on, but this is the end of it. You have plenty of room to choose and build what you really need, including external libraries or even your own ones. This means that you can have a framework specially customized...