How to handle a file_as_string (generated by Prawn) so that it is accepted by Carrierwave?

It turns out StringIO.new( pdf.render ) should indeed work.

The problem I was having was that the filename was being set incorrectly and, despite following the advise below on Carrierwave's wiki, a bug elsewhere in the code meant that the filename was returning as an empty string. I'd overlooked this an assumed that something else was needed

https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave/wiki/How-to:-Upload-from-a-string-in-Rails-3

my code ended up looking like this

def perform
  s = StringIO.new(pdf.render)

  def s.original_filename; "my file name"; end

  document  = Document.new(
    object_id: @object.id
  )

  document.file = s

  document.save!
end

You want to create a tempfile (which is fine on Heroku as long as you don't expect it to persist across requests).

def perform
  # Create instance of your Carrierwave Uploader
  uploader = MyUploader.new

  # Generate your PDF
  pdf = GenerateReportPdf.new(@object)

  # Create a tempfile
  tmpfile = Tempfile.new("my_filename")

  # set to binary mode to avoid UTF-8 conversion errors
  tmpfile.binmode 

  # Use render to write the file contents
  tmpfile.write pdf.render

  # Upload the tempfile with your Carrierwave uploader
  uploader.store! tmpfile

  # Close the tempfile and delete it
  tmpfile.close
  tmpfile.unlink
end