I am getting a response from the rest is an Epoch time format like

start_time = 1234566
end_time = 1234578

I want to convert that epoch seconds in MySQL format time so that I could store the differences in my MySQL database.

I tried:

>>> import time
>>> time.gmtime(123456)
time.struct_time(tm_year=1970, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=10, tm_min=17, tm_sec=36, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=2, tm_isdst=0)

The above result is not what I am expecting. I want it be like

2012-09-12 21:00:00

Please suggest how can I achieve this?

Also, Why I am getting TypeError: a float is required for

>>> getbbb_class.end_time = 1347516459425
>>> mend = time.gmtime(getbbb_class.end_time).tm_hour
Traceback (most recent call last):
  ...
TypeError: a float is required

To convert your time value (float or int) to a formatted string, use:

time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S', time.localtime(1347517370))

You can also use datetime:

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1347517370).strftime('%c')
  '2012-09-13 02:22:50'

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1347517370).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
'2012-09-13 14:22:50' # Local time

To get UTC:

>>> datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(1347517370).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
  '2012-09-13 06:22:50'

This is what you need

In [1]: time.time()
Out[1]: 1347517739.44904

In [2]: time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", time.gmtime(time.time()))
Out[2]: '2012-09-13 06:31:43'

Please input a float instead of an int and that other TypeError should go away.

mend = time.gmtime(float(getbbb_class.end_time)).tm_hour

Try this:

>>> import time
>>> time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", time.gmtime(1347517119))
'2012-09-12 23:18:39'

Also in MySQL, you can FROM_UNIXTIME like:

INSERT INTO tblname VALUES (FROM_UNIXTIME(1347517119))

For your 2nd question, it is probably because getbbb_class.end_time is a string. You can convert it to numeric like: float(getbbb_class.end_time)

#This adds 10 seconds from now.
from datetime import datetime
import commands

date_string_command="date +%s"
utc = commands.getoutput(date_string_command)
a_date=datetime.fromtimestamp(float(int(utc))).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
print('a_date:'+a_date)
utc = int(utc)+10
b_date=datetime.fromtimestamp(float(utc)).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
print('b_date:'+b_date)

This is a little more wordy but it comes from date command in unix.

First a bit of info in epoch from man gmtime

The ctime(), gmtime() and localtime() functions all take an argument of data type time_t which represents calendar  time.   When  inter-
       preted  as  an absolute time value, it represents the number of seconds elapsed since 00:00:00 on January 1, 1970, Coordinated Universal
       Time (UTC).

to understand how epoch should be.

>>> time.time()
1347517171.6514659
>>> time.gmtime(time.time())
(2012, 9, 13, 6, 19, 34, 3, 257, 0)

just ensure the arg you are passing to time.gmtime() is integer.