title: Getting Started with Noda Time
body: <p>I am looking to use Noda time for a fairly simple application, however I am struggling to find any documentation to handle a very basic use case:</p>
  
  <p>I have a logged in user, and will be storing their preferred timezone in the settings.  Any date/times that come from the client come in a known text format (e.g. "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm"), with a known time zone id (e.g. "Europe/London").  I was planning on converting these times to UTC/Noda Instants to prevent the need to store the time zone info with each date in the database.</p>
  
  <p>Firstly, does this sound like a sensible approach?  I am free to change pretty much anything, so would be happy to be set on a better/more sensible course.  The database is MongoDb, using the C# driver.</p>
  
  <p>What I have tried is along these lines, but struggling to get over the first step!</p>
  
  <pre><code>var userSubmittedDateTimeString = "2013/05/09 10:45";
  var userFormat = "yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm";
  var userTimeZone = "Europe/London";
  
  //noda code here to convert to UTC
  
  
  //Then back again:
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I know someone will ask "what have you tried", to which all i have is various failed conversions.  Happy to be pointed to an "Getting started with Noda time" page!    </p>