# twister > Twister is a fast and light-weight micro-framework component library Another definition of this code release would be; > Twister is a set of fast and light-weight components around which a framework can be written There is also a [skeleton application](https://github.com/twister-php/skeleton), also called Twister based on this code! At the heart of the framework, sits a very flexible, simple and elegant Inversion-of-Control (IoC) Container. In fact, there are NO global variables, NO define's, NO pipeline, NO Kernel and NO App; just the Container. The Container controls the entire flow of code (except routing), with a custom `execute()` function (written by you); which is actually just an anonymous callback function inside the Container, called from the Front Controller (index.php); even the name of that function can be changed in the config file. ie. There is NO pre-programmed flow of the program or hard-coded Kernel/App. Most things are handled/registered with the IoC Container, objects are pre-configured and `lazy-loaded` on request/use only! Along with the Container, comes a very flexible and fast router (inside the Request class). I consider this router to be THE fastest router I've tested, with the same functionality. It includes the ability to filter by method (GET/POST), and optional parameters like `/user/{id}[/{name}]` Another somewhat unique capability is the ability to pre-define the patterns associated with named parameters eg. `id`=>`\d+` So everytime you specify `{id}`, `{date}`, `{uuid}` etc. in the routes, the pre-configured patterns are used, or you can specify custom patterns with `{id:[0-9]+}` or `{id:uuid}` where `uuid`=>`[A-F0-9-]+` etc.    Two design choices make the router fast: * Everything is configured/loaded from a `config` array (which is usually cached by APC/Xcode/PHP7) * The router splits the request uri by '/', doing an `isset` array lookup for the first path segment * The router only takes further action after the first segment (eg. /admin/, /login etc.) is resolved Although Twister is a fully functional and useable framework (based on my personal framework), it's more a proof-of-concept for me to demonstrate my capabilities and design decisions. ## Benchmarks: All tests were done with a skeleton `hello world` application on the same PC. Laravel and Symfony were NOT configured to establish a database connection, while Twister WAS! With a database connection, Symfony dropped to 9-12 requests per second, and Laravel 12-16 rps, Twister was running about 50x-100x faster than Symfony and Laravel ``` ab -t 30 http://laravel/ Complete requests: 198 Requests per second: 6.59 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 151.765 [ms] (mean) memory_get_usage(): 6,621,416 memory_get_usage(true): 2,097,152 memory_get_peak_usage(): 6,691,272 memory_get_peak_usage(true): 2,097,152 ab -t 30 http://symfony/ Complete requests: 95 Requests per second: 3.15 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 317.717 [ms] (mean) memory_get_usage(): 10,887,352 memory_get_usage(true): 4,194,304 memory_get_peak_usage(): 11,168,984 memory_get_peak_usage(true): 4,194,304 ab -t 30 http://twister/ Complete requests: 911 Requests per second: 30.35 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 32.952 [ms] (mean) memory_get_usage(): 858,848 memory_get_usage(true): 2,097,152 memory_get_peak_usage(): 1,049,528 memory_get_peak_usage(true): 2,097,152 ```