Python requests send certificate as string

I cant seem to get the handshake working properly.

cert = 'path/to/cert_file.pem'
url = 'https://example.com/api'

requests.get(url, cert=cert, verify=True)

This is fine when I use it locally where I have the file physically. We host our application on heroku and use environvariables.

The requests module doesnt seem to accept certificates as strings. eg.

$ export CERTIFICATE="long-list-of-characters"

requests.get(url, cert=get_env('CERTIFICATE'), verify=True)

I have also tried something like this:

cert = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile()
cert.write(CERTIFICATE)
cert.seek(0)
requests.get(url, cert=cert.name, verify=True)

First of all, it works locally but not on heroku. Anyways, it doesnt feel like a solid solution. I get a SSL handshake error.

Any suggestions?

from Python requests send certificate as string