datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp
will do, if you know the time zone, you could produce the same output as with time.gmtime
>>> datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1284286794)
datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 12, 11, 19, 54)
or
>>> datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(1284286794)
datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 12, 10, 19, 54)