Best way to create FA1.2 token with TZIP016

Question

What is the best way to implement a FA1.2 token with TZIP-016 metadata (symbol, name, decimals...)? I am using SmartPy. So far, I noted two methods: the first one is to implement a FA1.2 token with a json metadata such as

{
  "name": "mytoken",
  "description": "This is constructed just to be an example to be put on IPFS.\nAt the time of writing, the TZIP is now at `30b4bd3` a.k.a. “WIP-TZIP-16: Mention future work & extensions.”",
  "version": "0.42",
  "decimals": 42,
  "symbol": "AAAA",
  "interfaces": [
    "TZIP-16 draft"
  ]
}

By there is also a method where people: Implement a FA2 token that generates the desired FA1.2 token with a method called :

make_metadata(symbol, name, decimals):
    "Helper function to build metadata JSON bytes values."
     return (sp.map(l = {
        # Remember that michelson wants map already in ordered
        "decimals" : sp.bytes_of_string("%d" % decimals),
        "name" : sp.bytes_of_string(name),
        "symbol" : sp.bytes_of_string(symbol)
     }))

What is the best method?

Answer 1

The FA1.2 template was updated this week by Keefer Taylor. It will be updated in https://smartpy.io templates this weekend.

Template link: https://smartpy.io/ide?cid=Qma5v9x6xjbzB82hjhr5Y5Sw2oppRzhyNBN11eVVyXpvxv&k=ea98e1d25d85d92f75c7

Here is an example after deployment: https://tzcomet.io/#/explorer%3Fexplorer-input%3DKT1RbbpEXYbjJx3pB5QxsCrcoBthXa3vMLoa

You can use the sp.init_metadata helper to generate valid metadata to be used off-chain or encoded to bytes and stored in the contract storage. https://smartpy.io/reference.html#_metadata_support

This thread contains a guide for that: Why aren't the offchain views appearing?