How to get field names in pyqgis 2.0

It is simpler than with version 1.8:

layer = qgis.utils.iface.activeLayer()  
fields = layer.pendingFields()   
field_names = [field.name() for field in fields]

or in one line

field_names = [field.name() for field in layer.pendingFields() ]

an after

for elem in layer.getFeatures():  
   print dict(zip(field_names, elem.attributes()))
{u'adip': 17, u'dipdir': 130, u'tdip': 29}
{u'adip': 55, u'dipdir': 325, u'tdip': 75}
.....

Generally to explore a new function, I use the dir() or the see module to examine what's inside:

dir(fields)
['FieldOrigin', 'OriginEdit', 'OriginJoin', 'OriginProvider', 'OriginUnknown', '__class__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dict__', '__doc__', '__format__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__len__', '__module__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', '__weakref__', 'append', 'at', 'clear', 'count', 'extend', 'field', 'fieldOrigin', 'fieldOriginIndex', 'indexFromName', 'isEmpty', 'remove', 'size', 'toList']

or

see(fields)
[]                 hash()             help()             len()
repr()             str()              .FieldOrigin()     .OriginEdit
.OriginJoin        .OriginProvider    .OriginUnknown     .append()
.at()              .clear()           .count()           .extend()
.field()           .fieldOrigin()     .fieldOriginIndex()
.indexFromName()   .isEmpty()         .remove()          .size()
.toList()

And you can see that there is a field() function so

print fields.field(0)
qgis.core.QgsField object at 0x163E39C0

and a field has a name, a type, a precision,...:

see(fields.field(0))
<                 <=                ==                !=                >
>=                hash()            help()            repr()
str()             .comment()        .displayString()  .length()
.name()           .precision()      .setComment()     .setLength()
.setName()        .setPrecision()   .setType()        .setTypeName()
.type()           .typeName()

so:

fields.field(0).name()
u'adip'
fields.field(0).type()
2
fields.field(0).typeName()
u'Integer'
fields.field(0).precision()
0
....

---

with .dataProvider()

It is .field()

....
prov = layer.dataProvider()
prov.fields().field(0).name()
u'adip'
prov.fields().field(0).typeName()
u'Integer'

and

field_names = [field.name() for field in prov.fields()]

It works for instance like this (since the last QGIS dev 1.9):

layer = vlayer # QGsVectorlayerObject
prov = vlayer.dataProvider()
fieldNames = []
fields = prov.fields()
for field in fields:
    fieldNames.append( field.name() )