Get django object id based on model attribute

I have a basic model named "Places" which has this view:

def view_index(request, place_name):

The user will access that view with a URL like this one:

http://server.com/kansas

"kansas" is a value stored in a field named "name" inside the model "Places".

The problem is that I can't figure out how to obtain the object id based just on the object name. Is there a way to do this?