How can i get a list of objects from a postgresql view table to display

Django 1.1 brought in a new feature that you might find useful. You should be able to do something like:

 class QryDescChar(models.Model): 
     iid_id = models.IntegerField()
     cid_id = models.IntegerField()
     cs = models.CharField(max_length=10)
     cid = models.IntegerField()
     charname = models.CharField(max_length=50)
 class Meta:
     db_table = u'qry_desc_char'
     managed = False

The documentation for the managed Meta class option is here. A relevant quote:

If False, no database table creation or deletion operations will be performed for this model. This is useful if the model represents an existing table or a database view that has been created by some other means. This is the only difference when managed is False. All other aspects of model handling are exactly the same as normal.

Once that is done, you should be able to use your model normally. To get a list of objects you'd do something like:

qry_desc_char_list = QryDescChar.objects.all()

To actually get the list into your template you might want to look at generic views, specifically the object_list view.

If your RDBMS lets you create writable views and the view you create has the exact structure than the table Django would create I guess that should work directly.

(This is an old question, but is an area that still trips people up and is still highly relevant to anyone using Django with a pre-existing, normalized schema.)

In your SELECT statement you will need to add a numeric "id" because Django expects one, even on an unmanaged model. You can use the row_number() window function to accomplish this if there isn't a guaranteed unique integer value on the row somewhere (and with views this is often the case).

In this case I'm using an ORDER BY clause with the window function, but you can do anything that's valid, and while you're at it you may as well use a clause that's useful to you in some way. Just make sure you do not try to use Django ORM dot references to relations because they look for the "id" column by default, and yours are fake.

Additionally I would consider renaming my output columns to something more meaningful if you're going to use it within an object. With those changes in place the query would look more like (of course, substitute your own terms for the "AS" clauses):

CREATE VIEW qry_desc_char as
 SELECT
    row_number() OVER (ORDER BY tbl_char.cid) AS id,
    tbl_desc.iid_id AS iid_id,
    tbl_desc.cid_id AS cid_id,
    tbl_desc.cs AS a_better_name,
    tbl_char.cid AS something_descriptive,
    tbl_char.charname AS name
FROM tbl_desc,tbl_char 
WHERE tbl_desc.cid_id = tbl_char.cid;

Once that is done, in Django your model could look like this:

class QryDescChar(models.Model):
    iid_id = models.ForeignKey('WhateverIidIs', related_name='+',
                                db_column='iid_id', on_delete=models.DO_NOTHING)
    cid_id = models.ForeignKey('WhateverCidIs', related_name='+',
                                db_column='cid_id', on_delete=models.DO_NOTHING)
    a_better_name = models.CharField(max_length=10)
    something_descriptive = models.IntegerField()
    name = models.CharField(max_length=50)

    class Meta:
        managed = False
        db_table = 'qry_desc_char'

You don't need the "_id" part on the end of the id column names, because you can declare the column name on the Django model with something more descriptive using the "db_column" argument as I did above (but here I only it to prevent Django from adding another "_id" to the end of cid_id and iid_id -- which added zero semantic value to your code). Also, note the "on_delete" argument. Django does its own thing when it comes to cascading deletes, and on an interesting data model you don't want this -- and when it comes to views you'll just get an error and an aborted transaction. Prior to Django 1.5 you have to patch it to make DO_NOTHING actually mean "do nothing" -- otherwise it will still try to (needlessly) query and collect all related objects before going through its delete cycle, and the query will fail, halting the entire operation.

Incidentally, I wrote an in-depth explanation of how to do this just the other day.

You are trying to fetch records from a view. This is not correct as a view does not map to a model, a table maps to a model.

You should use Django ORM to fetch QryDescChar objects. Please note that Django ORM will fetch them directly from the table. You can consult Django docs for extra() and select_related() methods which will allow you to fetch related data (data you want to get from the other table) in different ways.