database before routes

You could use your own standard MySQLi connection and retrieve the information from the database.

Thanks. thats an option.

I'm not really on perfomance yet but I already use a PDO connection in the database.php
Then I should do the same PDO connection in routes.php 

Or maybe I can do a single PDO connection in routes.php, and then pass database connection setup to database.php ?

 And is it recommended to use a folder structure like this

application
   config
   core (etc)
   version 1 
      - model
      - view
      - controller
   version 2
      - model
      - view
      - controller