when there is no network connection, the error type is NOT httpError although the description clearly contains the correct domain and code of -1009
It sounds like you're referring to the SwiftyDropbox library. What version number are you using, and what error are you getting? You may get a clientError in this case. There's a sample of handling these high level errors here:
https://github.com/dropbox/SwiftyDropbox#generic-network-request-errors
Thanks! I'll send this along as a request to change that error handling.